We present, for the first time, extensive simulation and
experimental characterizations of single SOA-MZI-based multiwavelength
conversion (MWC) of NRZ data at 10 Gb/s and RZ
data at 40 Gb/s under various parametric conditions deploying
ITU standard 100- and 200-GHz channel spacing. We analyze, in
particular, the physical performance impairments caused by highorder
four-wave mixing interference. Our simulation results indicate
the promising performance of the MWC up to eight channels
with 200-GHz channel spacing.We further experimentally demonstrate
four-channel 10-Gb/s error-free MWC with signal regeneration
possibilities and 40-Gb/s MWC with moderate penalties,
based on commercially available integrated SOA-MZIs. We obtained
clear, open converted eye diagrams and achieved negligible
difference in channel performance among all MWC channels at
both bit rates. Our results proved the excellent performance of a
simple scheme for various future network and system applications,
such as all-optical wavelength multicast and grid networking.