Patent ID: 8909062

Claim:
A method for regenerating and amplifying optical signals, comprising: determining a source optical signal to be regenerated and amplified, the source optical signal modulated using a multilevel modulation format; adding a first pump optical signal and a second pump optical signal to the source optical signal to yield an intermediate optical signal; determining a level of multilevel modulation used to modulate the source optical signal; and based on the determined level, selecting a first pair of conjugate optical signals from a plurality of pairs of conjugate optical signals, wherein: the first pair comprises a first conjugate optical signal and a second conjugate optical signal, each conjugate optical signal having a phase that is a conjugate of a multiple of the phase of a source optical signal; within a given pair of conjugate optical signals, the phase of each conjugate optical signal is equal to the same negative multiple of the phase of the input optical signal; and the negative multiple of the phase of the source optical signal for each pair is unique with respect to the other pairs; creating the first conjugate optical signal and the second conjugate optical signal from the intermediate optical signal; and performing degenerate phase-sensitive amplification utilizing the first conjugate optical signal, the second conjugate optical signal and the source optical signal to yield an output optical signal.