| In future telecommunication networks, a wide range of pulse durations 0.1–100 ps, duty cycles from less than 1% to 99%, and different modulation formats, such as on-off-keying (OOK) and binary or differential phase-shift-keying (BPSK or DPSK) will be selected, depending on the network size and the bit rate. A transparent all-optical format conversion between OOK and DPSK is highly demanded to connect cost effective OOK based metropolitan area networks (MAN) to robust PSK-based long-haul backbone networks. Moreover, for such complex optical transmission systems, the information on the phase and amplitude of the pulses is required for predicting the effects of chromatic dispersion and various optical nonlinearities. A temporal resolution of 1 ps and a sensitivity of less than 0.1 mW are required for an ideal characterization of optical pulses used in optical communications systems.;In this thesis, we simulate the simple method of pulse characterization using sinusoidal optical phase modulation proposed by Kang and Dorrer using OptiSystem™ and MATLAB™. We also experimentally verify this method. A detailed characterization of all optical OOK to DPSK format conversion is presented by comparing simulation and experimental results for the receiver sensitivity (i.e., received power to have a BER of 10-9) on the important properties of the input signal. By knowing the optimum configuration of the single channel OOK to DPSK format conversion, we then perform an OOK to DPSK format conversion with wavelength multicasting, which can operate simultaneously at four different wavelengths. |
