ABSTRACT
The possibility of generating signals at a desired frequency by all-optical wavelength conversion is extremely attractive for many different applications, including telecommunications, sensing, medicine, and defense. The capability of wavelength converting cheap and reliable optical sources into very different frequency bands as compared to the original is also very important. Wavelength conversion has been performed using optical, electrical and optical converters with which the input optical signal is converted to an electrical signal by using photodetectors, electrical signal processing is performed, and finally, the electrical signal is used to modulate an optical source delivering a different wavelength. All-optical wavelength conversion can be realized using both semiconductor optical amplifier-based converters and fiber-based converters. A different scheme for wavelength conversion of complex optical signals was proposed and experimentally demonstrated in 2015 using an all-optical implementation of the concept of time-domain holography.
