To Investigate the Characteristics Parameters of Semiconductor Optical Amplifier based on Wavelength Converters for all Optical Networks

optical wavelength converters are key devices for all optical networks. Wavelength conversion employing semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) has become an important component in WDM networks. This paper investigates the performance of a 20 Gb/s SOA-based FWM wavelength converter system. For this we have optimized the SOA parameters to achieve adequate quality factor and enhancement in four wave mixing effect so as to improve the converted signal power. This will be done in such a manner that the SOA never saturates and generate maximum four-wave mixing signals with minimum gain fluctuations. Performance is analyzed in terms of converted signal power, converted optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) and Q factor for both up and down conversions with respect to wavelength shifted up to 10nm. It was found that the conversion efficiency and OSNR of the converted signal are 1dB and 45 dBm resp. Keywordslength converter, WDM, SOA, FWM