Patent ID: 6909534

Claim:
A wavelength converter with wideband four-wave-mixing, comprising: a laser diode for using as an optical carrier to carry an input electrical signal; an optical modulator, having a first input terminal connected by an optical fiber to the modulated laser diode and a second input terminal receiving the input electrical signal, thus modulating the input electrical signal to a optical beam of the modulated laser diode and accordingly generating an optical signal; a first polarization controller, connected by an optical fiber to a terminal of the optical modulator, thus controlling polarization of the input optical signal; a first tunable laser, generating a first pump with a first wavelength, thus determining required conversion range; a second tunable laser, generating a second pump with a second wavelength, thus determining the required conversion wavelength; a second polarization controller, connected by an optical fiber to the second tunable laser, thus controlling the polarization of the second pump; an optical coupler, coupling the input optical signal, the first pump and the second pump into an optical fiber; a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), connected by an optical fiber to the optical coupler, thus generating a converted signal with four-wave mixing (FWM) using its third-order nonlinear property; a third tunable laser, generating an assist beam with a third wavelength; and a multiplexer, having a first input terminal connected by an optical fiber to an output of the SOA and a second input terminal connected by an optical fiber to the third tunable laser, thus injecting the assist beam and output the converted signal into an output fiber.