Chirp consequences of all-optical RZ to NRZ conversion using cross-phase modulation in an active semiconductor photonic integrated circuit

Data is converted from return-to-zero (RZ) to nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) format, at 5 Gb/s using a Mach-Zehnder (MZ) interferometric wavelength conversion photonic integrated circuit. The resulting NRZ data has chirp on both its leading and trailing edges. Nevertheless, propagation up to 240 km is reported.