All-optical 20 Gbit/s NRZ-DPSK demodulation and clock recovery

All-optical clock recovery (CR) from 20-Gbit/s nonreturn-to-zero differential phase-shift-keying (NRZ-DPSK) signal is demonstrated experimentally by using Polarization-Maintaining Fiber Loop Mirror Filter and semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) fiber ring laser. Only by adjusting polarization controller (PC), NRZ-DPSK signal were conveniently and fast converted to pseudo return-to-zero (PRZ) signal via PMF-LMF. Then the PRZ signal is injected into the SOA fiber laser for CR. The recovered clock signals with the extinction ratio of 10 dB and the root-mean-square timing jitter of 850 fs is achieved under 231-1 pseudorandom binary sequence NRZ-DPSK signals measurement.