| The use of highly nonlinear fibers (HNLFs), including Microstructure fibers, allows for the generation of optical pulses at wavelengths not normally available. These fibers are used as the gain medium in fiber-optical parametric oscillators (FOPOs) and can generate optical pulse trains with repetition rates from 10 to 40GHz, and pulse widths of only a few picoseconds. HNLFs can also be used for simultaneous wavelength conversion of multiple channels carrying 10Gb/s differential phase shift keyed (DPSK) data. The use of an electro-absorption modulator (EAM) in an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) cavity allows for the generation of ultra-low-jitter pulse streams of both single and multiple wavelengths. At the same time, a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) can be used in a configuration to reduce the phase noise on DPSK signals.; In this thesis, multiple experiments utilizing nonlinear fibers and optoelectronic devices are described for use in different signal processing applications. These include optical pulse generation, clock recovery, data format conversion, wavelength conversion and signal regeneration. These systems can be used in optical communications, optical sampling, chip-to-chip clock distribution in computers and optical measurements. A theoretical simulation is also presented that describes a method for optimizing the fiber lengths used in a pulse compressor and also looks at the noise properties of the compressed pulses. |
