All-optical NRZ-to-PRZ format transformer with an injection-locked Fabry-Perot laser diode at unlasing condition.

By using an optical nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) format data-stream to injection-lock an synchronously modulated Fabry-Perot laser diode at below threshold condition (without DC driving current), an output data-stream with pseudo-return-to-zero (PRZ) format can be generated at bit rate of up to 2.488 Gbit/s. Such an NRZ-to-PRZ format transformation is due to the injectionlocking induced gain-switching of the FPLD with the incoming NRZ data. The PRZ data-stream with a maximum on/off extinction ratio of 12.2 dB is obtained under the optical injecting power of -2 dBm and the RF driving power of 24.4 dBm. The best side-mode suppression ratio of 40 dB and the lowest timing jitter of 0.4 ps for the PRZ data-stream are observed. A power penalty of 1.2 dB is measured at a bit-error rate of 10-9 after NRZ-to-PRZ transformation. In application, the demonstration of an all-optical OR logic gate using the FPLD-based NRZ-to-PRZ transformer is also reported.