Wavelength conversion with 2R-regeneration by UL-SOA induced chirp filtering Cristiano de Mello Gallep 1 and Evandro Conforti 2 1 Div. Tecnologia em Telecomunicações – CESET/Unicamp, R. Paschoal Marmo, 1888 – Jd. Nova Itália, 13484-370, Limeira/SP – Brasil. gallep@ceset.unicamp.br. 2 Dep. Microondas e Óptica, FEEC/ Unicamp, Av. Albert Einstein, 400 – Barão Geraldo, 13083-970, Campinas/SP - Brazil, conforti@dmo.fee.unicamp.br Abstract. Simulations of ultra-long (10 mm) semiconductor optical amplifier’s induced optical chirp (cross-phase modulation), with posterior conversion to amplitude modulation by proper filtering, show promising results for wave- length conversion with pulse re-amplifying and re-shaping in 10 Gbps and 20 Gbps. The dependences on filter bandwidth and optical input power (high, me- dium and low levels) are analyzed for conversion of originally clean and dirty eye-diagrams at the input gate within their reshaping capability. 1 Introduction The semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is a prominent key-tool device to act as the nonlinear element in all-optical signal processing for WDM (wavelength division multiplexing) networks [1]. Due to the maturity of this device technology, the costs to the market are decreasing and the integration with other active and passive devices is possible. SOA-based sub-systems are being developed to give feasible alternatives for optical signal processing as wavelength conversion [1], switching [2] and pulse re- generation [3], among other important functionalities. To implement such all-optical processing features, the phenomenon mostly used is the SOA’s nonlinear gain behavior: the cross-gain modulation (XGM) and the cross- phase modulation (XPM). Another important non-linear phenomenon, the four-wave mixing (FWM), is less used due its complexity, both in hardware setup and operation, although presenting high speed response [1]. All of them - XGM, XPM and FWM - are reached under saturated optical gain conditions during SOA amplification, ob- tained by injecting either high input optical powers or electronic bias current into the SOA active cavity, or by doing both simultaneously. The first nonlinear process, XGM, is the easiest to implement but the one with the slowest response, and so the worst converted eye-opening performance. It can be used to cover bit-rates not higher than 5 Gbps and with a clear input pulse’s shape format, since XGM depends on very deep carrier density modulation. The second, XPM, is faster than the previous one and presents better eye-opening conversion, operating based on the fast cavity index response due to smaller carrier modulation, enabling pulse regeneration in the 10-40 Gbps data rate range. But most XPM im-