100-Gbps per-channel all-optical wavelength conversion without pre-amplifiers based on an integrated nanophotonic...

All-optical wavelength conversion based on four-wave mixing attracts intense interest in many areas, especially in optical fiber communications, due to the advantages of femtosecond response, modulation-format transparency, and high flexibility in optical network management. In this paper, we present the first optical translation of 32-GBaud 16QAM signals with an integrated Si₃N₄ nonlinear nanophotonic waveguide. An on-chip continuous-wave conversion efficiency of up to -0.6 dB from S band to C band is achieved in the dispersion-engineered low-loss Si₃N₄ nonlinear waveguide that is back-end compatible with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor processes. The high conversion efficiency avoids the use of external optical amplifiers for signal demodulation. The converted idler is successfully received with a sensitivity penalty of less than 0.5 dB. Moreover, pre-amplifier-free multichannel wavelength conversion of over-100-Gbps coherent signals in C band is also demonstrated using the same Si₃N₄ nanophotonic waveguide via changing the pump wavelength, which shows good flexibility in all-optical signal processing. Additionally, wavelength conversion with a bandwidth over 100 nm can be expected by optimizing the current Si₃N₄ nanophotonic waveguide, which is promising for commercial coherent fiber communications and has bright prospects in various areas including optical signal processing, imaging, optical spectroscopy, and quantum optics.