Polarization insensitive wavelength multicasting of DPSK signal using four-wave mixing in a birefringent photonic crystal fiber

We demonstrate polarization-insensitive wavelength multicasting of differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) signal based on four-wave mixing (FWM) in a highly nonlinear, birefringent photonic crystal fiber (PCF). The 10-Gbit/s RZ-DPSK input signal is copied to 8 wavelength channels through FWM with three optical pumps. The pump wavelengths are unequally spaced to avoid undesirable crosstalk from pump-to-pump beatings. The dependence of conversion efficiency on input signal polarization is suppressed by exploiting the PCF birefringence together with control of the pump polarizations. All pump polarizations are aligned at 45 degrees to the principal axes of the PCF. Open eyes and error-free results are obtained in all the 8 multicast channels for polarization-scrambled RZ-DPSK input signal.