Conclusions
In conclusion the exploited fibers performed in a very satisfactory way, allowing us to use few meters of fibers instead of kilometers, and more manageable powers. OFS Not-PM Highly Nonlinear Fiber was the most exploited one thanks to the absence of insertion loss and its behaviour was the closest to simulations. OFS PM Highly Nonlinear Fiber also performed well but it paid the drawback of insertion loss due to internal splicings and this conditioned its performances. Photonic Crystal Fiber exhibited a behaviour close to simulations and its performances were satisfactory, unfortunately we had it at our disposal for a short period of time and we couldn’t exploit it for some applications. Bismuth-based Nonlinear Fiber was surprising and with a length of only one meter it was able to substitute a whole spool of fiber.
The only drawback it suffered was the insertion loss that doubled the required input power, thus halving the effective nonlinear coefficient. In spite of that it performed very well.
The qualitative evaluation of the 2R NOLM-based Regenerator performances requires to be confirmed by carrying out accurate BER measurements but it represents an important proof of its potential.
The obtained results confirm the remarkable effectiveness of these new fibers, allowing stability and compactness unconceivable before, thus making all-optical signal processing a real alternative to conventional opto-electro-optical processing for the next future.
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