Abstract: A lumped model of SOA is used to compare the output power and SNR of four wavelength converter schemes on FWM in SOA. It is shown that if the schemes have the same input power and produce the same frequency shift, the polarization-diversity scheme has the highest output signal-to-noise ratio, and if the same minimum output signal-to-noise ratio of the system is assumed, this scheme has the greatest frequency tunability.

Key words: wavelength converter, four-wave mixing: semiconductor optical amplifier