A Low Cost, Multi-Wavelength Optical Source Enabling Independent WDM Channels Using a Single SOA and ASE Inputs

Abstract

A multi-channel wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) transmission system using non-degenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) with spectrum-sliced ASE inputs from a single LED high powered incoherent source is presented. Three incoherent ASE inputs generate twelve SOA output channels, nine of which are FWM generated, and all are modulated at 10 Gb/s after the FWM process to avoid phase-noise limitations. SOA input power saturation characteristics were investigated and eye diagram analysis confirms high-quality transmission for each FWM channel, with an average achievable link length of 63.9 km, proving the validity of the scheme. By decoupling carrier generation from data encoding, this post-FWM architecture enables clean performance despite incoherent seeds, offering a low-cost, scalable solution for WDM in access and metro networks and wavelength conversion if required.