Apparatus and method for wavelength conversion and clock signal extraction using semiconductor optical amplifiers

Abstract

Provided is an apparatus and method for simultaneous optical wavelength conversion and optical clock signal extraction using semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). The apparatus includes: a wavelength converter receiving a pump beam having input information and a probe beam having a different wavelength from the pump beam, and outputting the pump beam with an overshoot shifted to a red wavelength and an undershoot shifted to a blue wavelength due to non-linear characteristics and self-phase modulation of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) and the probe beam delivered the input information from the pump beam; an optical divider dividing output paths of the probe beam to which the input information has been delivered and the pump beam having the overshoot and the undershoot; a converted-wavelength extractor filtering the probe beam received from the optical divider; and a clock data regenerator obtaining a pseudo return-to-zero (PRZ) signal from the pump beam received from the optical divider and extracting a clock signal from the PRZ signal. The apparatus and method can simultaneously perform wavelength conversion and optical clock signal extraction on an NRZ signal using an optical method, without converting the NRZ signal into an electrical signal.