All-optical tunable multilevel amplitude regeneration based on coherent wave mixing using a polarizer

We describe and demonstrate an all-optical tunable phase- preserving scheme for multilevel amplitude regeneration based on coherent optical wave mixing using a polarizer for optical star 8-quadrature-amplitude modulation (star-8QAM) and star-16QAM signals with a power ratio of 1:5. Amplitude noise can be efficiently suppressed on both amplitude levels. A regeneration factor of nearly 5 for the higher-amplitude level of star-8QAM and 3 for lower-amplitude level are achieved. The system robustness against nonlinear phase noise originating from the Gordon-Mollenauer effect in a 150 km transmission line is investigated using the proposed amplitude regenerator.