Dispersion Compensation

Dispersion Compensation
Dispersion management is a very important part of designing WDM transmission systems.

several techniques to reduce the impact of chromatic dispersion: (1) using external modulation in conjunction with DFB lasers. (2) using fiber with small chromatic dispersion. (3) by chromatic dispersion compensation. Chromatic dispersion compensation can be employed when external modulation alone is not sufficient to reduce the chromatic dispersion penalty.

Dispersion Compensating Fibers

Chromatic dispersion compensating fibers (DCFs) have negative chromatic dispersion in the 1550 nm wavelength range. Because of the alternating signs of the chromatic dispersion, this approach leads to a small value of the accumulated chromatic dispersion. One disadvantage of this approach is the added loss introduced in the system by the DCF.

figure of merit (FOM), which is defined as the ratio of the absolute amount of chromatic dispersion per unit wavelength to the loss introduced by the DCE.

Chirped Fiber Bragg Gratings

The fiber Bragg grating is a versatile device that can be used to compensate for chromatic dispersion. In a regular fiber, chromatic dispersion introduces larger delays for the lowerfrequency components in a pulse. To compensate for this effect, we can design chirped gratings that do exactly the opposite. Chirped gratings are ideally suited to compensate for individual wavelengths rather than multiple wavelengths. DCF is better suited to compensate over a wide range of wavelengths.