MULTISTAGE ALL-OPTICAL WDM-TO-TDM-TO-WDM AND TDM-TO-WDM-TO-TDM DATA-FORMAT CONVERSION AND RECONVERSION THROUGH 80 KM OF FIBER AND 3 EDFAS

We demonstrate error free, all-optical multistage 2-Gb/s data format conversion and reconversion between two wavelength channels and one high-speed time channel. We perform both WDM-to-TDM-to-WDM and TDM-to-WDM-to-TDM conversions based on SOA cross-gain compression. Our system uses 80 km of fiber and three EDFA's between the stages, and our scheme can be extended to include many channels. This system may serve as a key building block for all-optical WDM networks.