On-chip all-optical wavelength conversion of multicarrier, multilevel modulation (OFDM m-QAM) signals using a silicon waveguide.

We report on-chip all-optical wavelength conversion of multicarrier multilevel modulation signals in a silicon waveguide. Using orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) combined with advanced multilevel quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals (i.e., OFDM m-QAM), we experimentally demonstrate all-optical wavelength conversions of 3.2 Gbaud/s OFDM 16/32/64/128-QAM signals based on the degenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) nonlinear effect in a silicon waveguide. The measured optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) penalties of wavelength conversion are ∼3  dB for OFDM 16-QAM and ∼4  dB for OFDM 32-QAM at 7% forward error correction (FEC) threshold and ∼3.5  dB for OFDM 64-QAM and ∼4.5  dB for OFDM 128-QAM at 20% FEC threshold. The observed clear constellations of converted idlers imply favorable performance obtained for silicon-waveguide-based OFDM 16/32/64/128-QAM wavelength conversions.