Optical add/drop multiplexer using short- and chirped long-period bre gratings for dense wavelength-division multiplexing

Ronnie Kritzinger, Pieter L. Swart

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Rand Afrikaans University PO Box 524, Auckland Park, 2006, South Africa Tel: +27 11 489 2351 Fax: +27 11 489 2344 E-mail: pls@ing.rau.ac.za

Abstract We propose and demonstrate the use of a novel wavelength-tuneable optical add/drop multiplexer (OADM) device based on bre Bragg gratings (FBGs) and chirped long-period gratings (CLPGs) having a broad transmission spectrum. Numerical simulations predict bandwidths in the order of 40 nm and higher. Fabrication of the symmetric CLPGs, and the method of strain used for tuning of the bre Bragg grating are also discussed. Index Terms Wavelength-tuneable, Add/drop multiplexer, Fibre Bragg gratings, Chirped long-period gratings.

I. I NTRODUCTION ENSE wavelength-division multiplexed (DWDM) networks require low insertion loss (< 0.5 dB ), high channel isolation (> 30 dB ), low back-reection, widerange wavelength selectivity, low cross-talk (< 39 dB ), and economically viable optical add/drop multiplexers. This paper proposes the design of a novel broadband add/drop multiplexing device, that consists of short- and chirped longperiod bre gratings. Due to low back-reection, low insertion loss, ease of fabrication, and high channel isolation of LPGs [13], transmission grating technology nds application in dispersion compensation, and in band rejection lters [19][21]. These types of bre gratings also nd applications in sensing [1], [11], add/drop multiplexing applications [9], [24], and gain equalization of erbium-doped bre ampliers (EDFAs) [18], [22]. Long-period gratings are periodic perturbations in an optical bre that enable the coupling of power between two copropagating modes. Fibre Bragg gratings involve the coupling of a forward propagating guided mode to an identical counterpropagating mode. Recently, there has been an interest in transmission gratings that produce high isolation broadband transmission spectra (bandwidths > 50 nm). It has been shown that bandwidths in the range of 60 nm 100 nm can be acheieved [12], [15]. This transmission grating property will increase the exibility of a DWDM network, by coupling of a wide range of wavelengths at once. In this paper, we propose a means for creating a broadband add/drop multiplexing device that drops several International

Telecommunication Union (ITU) DWDM channel signals in a selected wavelength range with a suitable channel spacing, from one single-mode optical bre to the next using identical chirped transmission gratings. A short-period grating, which is tuned in a third optical bre, and an optical circulator are then used to drop a specic wavelength channel. This dropped channel can later be added to the remaining DWDM channels. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. In Section II bre grating theory is briey discussed, and Section III gives the proposed design of the OADM. Concluding remarks are given in Section IV. II. BACKGROUND The refractive-index modulation of a bre grating along the length of a bre can be written as [2]: n(z ) = ncore ef f + nef f cos

2 z + (z )

(1)

where ncore ef f is the effective refractive-index of the fundamental LP01 core mode, is the fringe visibility, is the grating period, nef f is the induced index change spatially averaged over the bre grating period, and (z ) denotes the grating chirp. A. Fibre Bragg gratings Since the dominant interaction in a bragg grating is the reection of a particular mode of amplitude A(z ) into a similar counter-propagating mode of amplitude B (z ), the simplied coupled-mode equations for FBGs then look as follows [7]: dA = i A(z ) + iB (z ) dz

(2) dB = i B (z ) i A(z ) dz where A(z ) is the forward mode, B (z ) is the reverse mode, is dened as the AC coupling coefcient, and is the general DC self-coupling coefcient. The two modes, A(z ) and B (z ), represent slowly varying mode envelope functions [8]. The spectral dependence and diffraction efciency of bre

gratings can be obtained by using the coupled-mode theory, since it accurately models the optical properties of most bre gratings. B. Long-period gratings The coupled-mode equations describing the mode coupling in transmission gratings are dened as follows [8]: dA = i A(z ) + iB (z ) dz dB = i B (z ) + i A(z ) dz The phase-matching condition for LPGs is dened as [8]: 1 n core clad 2

2

CLPG 1 Non-resonant light

Multiplexer

Main Output

Coupling region CLPG 2 Tunable Fiber Bragg Grating 1 Circulator 2 Circulator Input 3 Fiber Stretcher Output 3 1 Resonant light

(3)
Fig. 1. tion. DWDM experimental setup for the add/drop multiplexer congura-

(4)

A. Fabrication method for chirped long-period gratings The exposure of germania-doped silica bres to a KrF laser through an amplitude mask, producing a UV-induced index modulation in the bre core, is the most common technique used to fabricate long-period bre gratings [13]. This method does not produce azimuthally symmetric LPGs, and results in a high polarization-dependent loss of the particular grating. CO2 laser exposure of a bre at 10.6 m has been demonstrated to produce LPGs with polarization insensitivity, and with high temperature stability [5]. When the bre was annealed at 1200 C , it was also shown that the spectral properties of the LPG remained unchanged [6]. In this paper, we will consider fabrication of chirped LPGs in germania-doped silica bre, using a pulse-width modulated 25 W CO2 laser to produce azimuthally symmetrically written bre gratings, based on the point-by-point method [14].

where is the detuning parameter. core and clad are the propagation constants for the LP01 core mode and nth cladding mode respectively. r (ncore n clad ) is the resonant wavelength for coupling to the th (LPl ) cladding mode, where the azimuthal order of the mode is given by l. Chirping the LPG period along the bre axis causes the detuning parameter and coupling coefcient to vary for different distances along the bre axis. In our analysis of LPGs, coupling is done to a single cladding mode. In the case of linearly chirped transmssion gratings the grating period (z ) can be expressed as [4]: Lg (z ) = 0 z 2

(5)

where Lg is the grating length, 0 is the grating period at z = Lg /2, and denes the grating chirp. Increasing the grating period along the bre length indicates negative chirp, whereas decreasing the grating period indicates positive chirp. III. P ROPOSED DESIGN AND COMPUTER SIMULATIONS Fig. 1 illustrates the proposed design of a novel long-period grating add/drop multiplexer. Two chirped LPGs is placed in parallel in close contact (< 5 m), to form a cladding-mode coupler without the need of fusion [24]. The chirped LPGs are fabricated such that the LP01 core mode couples to the fth cladding mode with a desired chirp. The cladding-mode propagates in the cladding and a coupling region between the two optical bres, exciting a similar cladding mode in the parallel-placed bre with an identically inscribed chirped LPG. The chirp should be chosen such that the desired bandwidth is obtained, allowing operation as a broadband device. The tuneable Bragg grating and circulators perform the multiplexing/demultiplexing operation. The output of the circulator situated on the lefthand side of Fig. 1, can be multiplexed with the data dropped from the original bre using appropriate methods.

Fig. 2.

Fabrication setup for azimuthally symmetric chirped LPGs [14].

Fig. 2 illustrates the LPG fabrication process, where a pair of convex lenses are used to expand the CO2 laser beam to have a diameter of approximately 37.8 mm. The expanded carbon-dioxide beam is then converted to a ringshaped beam, by passing the original beam through an annular spatial lter, decreasing the beam diameter to approximate 25 mm and increasing the f -number to help alleviate the

alignment difculty, and increase the focal spot size. The annular CO2 laser beam is then deected from a 45 tilted at mirror parallel to the optical bre. The deected laser beam is focussed on the bre core by a concave spherical mirror with diameter 37.8 mm and focal length of approximately 38 mm, for the symmetrical exposure of the bre. The at and concave mirrors have been modied such that the bre passes through it horizontally, and the bre is supported by clamps. When the chirped LPG is fabricated using the point-by-point method, the translation stage moves in the axial direction to predetermined positions. The movement is in synchronization with the shutter in the carbon-dioxide laser beam. B. Theoretical Results The theoretical relationship between the long-period grating period , and the coupled wavelengths is used to obtain the specied LPG resonant wavelength desired. Fig. 3 indicates the variation of resonant wavelength with grating period for the coupling to different cladding modes. The parameters used to simulate Fig. 3 are similar to those of Corning single-mode (SMF-28e) bre, where = 0.005, core radius a1 = 4.1 m, and cladding radius a2 = 62.5 m.
1800

for coupling to the fth cladding mode. The bre parameters are the same as those used in Fig. 3.

Transmission (dB)

10 1500

1510

1520

1530

1540 1550 1560 Wavelength (nm)

1570

1580

1590

Fig. 4. Transmission spectra of a chirped LPG for different values of grating chirp. () dR /dz = 0, (- -) dR /dz = 0.24 nm/cm, and ( ) dR /dz = 0.24 nm/cm with a tanh-apodization prole.

1750

1700

1650

1600

1550 LP11 LP12 LP13 LP14 LP15 LP16 LP17 LP18

1500

1450

1400 200 250 300 350 400 Grating Period (m) 450 500 550

Fig. 3. Theoretical relationship between resonant wavelengths R and grating period in the case of core-to-cladding mode coupling.

To obtain the characteristics of LPGs, it is required to plot these curves for a specic optical bre, since the properties of the core/cladding refractive indexes and core/cladding sizes, differ from bre to bre. The slope of all the characteristic curves are positive as indicated in Fig. 3, but it can be predicted that for higher order cladding modes LPl ( > 9), the slopes of the curves approach innity for wavelengths higher than 1600 nm. By chirping the LPG, the transmission spectrum is broadened and will become wider for higher values of grating chirp . The spectral broadening will not only depend on the different resonant wavelengths which experience coupling across the length of the bre grating, but also on the order of the cladding mode into which coupling occurs [15], [19]. Fig. 4 illustrates the theoretically obtained transmission spectra of an LPG of 40 mm, induced index change nef f = 0.83 103 for different values of chirp dR /dz simulated

From Fig. 4 it can be seen that chirping of the grating period enables coupling over a larger range of wavelength. The transmission spectrum broadens as chirp in increased, and results in a lower value of transmission loss. If coupling was done to lower order cladding modes, the resulting transmission loss would be even lower. This could be very useful in the add/drop multiplexing device, or even in attening the gain spectra of EDFAs. Therefore, by adjusting the induced index change, length, and chirp, virtually any desired broadband spectrum can be obtained. By tuning the bre Bragg grating used in the proposed design illustrated in Fig. 1, a specic wavelength channel can be obtained. A low-cost piezoelectric ceramic bre stretcher (PZT) is used for the tuning process by increasing the length of the FBG induced with an external voltage, and results in an increase of overall grating period along the bre axis. The bre Bragg grating is typically fabricated by using a germania-doped silica bre exposed to a KrF excimer laser ( = 248 nm) through a phase mask [3]. The change in the resonant wavelength r due to a change in strain is given as [23]: strain = r (1 e ) (6)

Resonant Wavelength (nm)

where e is the effective strain-optic constant given by [10]: n2 e [12 (11 + 12 )] (7) 2 11 and 12 are the components of the strain-optic tensor, is Poissons ratio, and ne is the effective index of the core. Typical values for a common silica single-mode optical bre are: 11 = 0.153, 12 = 0.273, and = 0.17, where the wavelength-strain sensitivity at 1550 nm is approximately 1.2 pm/ [1], [16]. The simulation results obtained for a 20 mm apodized FBG under varying external applied strain is illustrated in Fig. 5. The strain applied ranges from 1600 1600 micro strain e =

(), where the resonant wavelength r is 1550 nm with zero applied strain.
1

0.9

0.8

0.7

Reflectivity [%]

0.6

0.5 1600e 800e 800e 1600e

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

1548

1548.5

1549

1549.5 1550 1550.5 Wavelength (nm)

1551

1551.5

1552

Fig. 5. Resonant wavelength shift for a Kaiser-prole apodized FBG under varying external strain.

By applying positive strain (increasing voltage on the piezoelectric ceramic bre stretcher), the grating period increases, and the central wavelength is shifted to higher values. This is vice-versa when negative strain is applied. The relationship between the strain applied and the varying resonant wavelength r is constant. The wavelength stability is affected signicantly, since Bragg gratings are quite sensitive to thermal uctuations [17]. It has been shown that the wavelength and applied strain sensitivity to the voltage applied is approximately 1 nm/V , and 85.4 /V respectively, when coupling is done to the LP08 cladding mode (l = 0) [24]. IV. C ONCLUSION A wavelength-tuneable ADM device for DWDM has been proposed, where the effect of chirp on the LPG transmission properties has been studied and illustrated with the aid of computer simulations. The chirped LPG produces spectra with wide bandwidth, and could be adjusted by varying the grating parameters and length. The FBG bonded on a bre stretcher is tuned to obtain a desired wavelength channel by adjusting the applied voltage, and the remaining wavelength channels not selected could be added to the rest of the spectrum by using optical circulators. The proposed OADM device is expected to have low insertion loss, low cross-talk, and high isolation, making it suitable for use in optical communication links. This ADM aparatus is the rst known design of its kind, and promises to make a great impact in DWDM networks. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors thank Telkom SA Ltd., ATC (Pty) Ltd., Marconi Communications SA Ltd., THRIP, NLC, NRF and RAU for nancial support. R EFERENCES
[1] V. Bhatia, Applications of long-period gratings to single and multiparameter sensing, Opt. Express., Vol. 4, pp. 457-466.

[2] K. P. Chen, P. R. Herman, R. Tam, J. Zhang, Rapid long-period grating formation in hydrogen loaded bre with 157 nm F2 laser radiation, Electron. Lett., Vol. 36, 2000-1. [3] Y. Chung, U. C. Paek, Fabrication and Performance Characteristics of Optical Fibre Gratings for Sensing Applications, IEEE Sensors, Section 16.2, 12 June, 2002. [4] M. Das, K. Thyagarajan, Wavelength-division multiplexing isolation lter using concatenated chirped long-period gratings, Optics Communications, Vol. 197, pp. 67-71, 2001. [5] D. D. Davis, T. K. Gaylord, E. N. Glytsis, S. C. Mettler, CO2 laser induced long-period bre gratings: Spectral characteristic, cladding modes and polarization independence, Electron. Lett., Vol. 34, pp. 1416-1417, 1998. [6] D. D. Davis, T. K. Gaylord, E. N. Glytsis, S. G. Kosinski, S. C. Mettler, A. M. Vengsarkar, Long-period bre grating fabrication with focussed CO2 laser beams, Electron. Lett., Vol. 34, pp. 302-303, 1998. [7] T. Erdogan, Cladding-mode resonances in short and long-period bre grating lters, J. Opt. Soc. Amer. A, vol. 14, no. 8, Aug., 1997. [8] T. Erdogan, Fibre Grating Spectra, J. of Lightwave Technology, vol. 15, vol. 15, no. 8, pp. 1277-1294, Aug., 1997. [9] V. Grubsky, D. S. Starodubov, J. Feinberg, Wavelength-selective coupler and add/drop multiplexer using long-period bre gratings, OFC00, paper FB5, 2000. [10] K. O. Hill, G. Meltz, Fibre Bragg grating technology fundamentals and overview, IEEE J. Lightwave Technol., Vol. 15, pp. 1263-1276, 1997. [11] S. W. James, R. P. Tatam, Optical bre long-period grating sensors: characteristics and application, Meas. Sci. Technol., Vol. 14, pp. R49R61, 2003. [12] C. Kakkar, K. Thyagarajan, Novel bre design for broadband long period gratings, Optics Communications, Vol. 220, pp. 308-314, 2003. [13] R. Kashyap, Fibre Bragg Gratings, Academic Press, pp. 2-3, New York, 1999. [14] S. T. Oh, C. I. Song, B. H. Lee, W T. Han, U. C. Paek, Y. Chung, Fabrication of azimuthally symmetric long-period bre gratings using CO2 laser, OECC 2001, Sydney, pp. 22-23, 2001. [15] S. Ramachandran, Z. Wang, M. Yan, Bandwidth control of long-period grating-based mode converters in few-mode bres, Opt. Lett., Vol. 27, pp. 698, 2002. [16] Y. J. Rao, In-bre Bragg grating sensors, Meas. Sci. Technol., Vol. 8, pp. 355-375, 1997. [17] A. Richter, T. Andritschke, H. Bock, P. Leishing, D. Stoll, L. Quetel, S. Aguy, Passive temperature compensation of piezo-tuneable bre Bragg gratings, Elec. Lett., Vol. 35, No. 15, pp. 1269-1271, 1999. [18] M. Rochette, M. Guy, S. LaRochelle, J. Lauzon, and F. Tre panier, Gain equalization of EDFAs with Bragg gratings, Photonics Technology Letters, Vol. 11, no. 5, May 1999. [19] D. B. Stegall, T. Erdogan, Dispersion control with use of long-period bre gratings, J. Opt. Soc. Amer. A, vol. 17, pp. 304-312, 2000. [20] A. M. Vengsarkar, P. J. Lemaire, J. B. Judkins, V. Bhatia, T. Erdogan, J. E. Sipe, Long-period bre gratings as band-rejection lters, J. Lightwave Technol., Vol. 14, pp. 58-65, 1996. [21] A. M. Vengsarkar, J. R. Pedrazzani, J. B. Judkins, P. J. Lemaire, S. Bergano, C. R. Davidson, Long period bre grating based gain equalizers, Opt. Lett., Vol. 21, pp. 336-338, 1996. [22] P. F. Wysocki, J. B. Judkins, R. P. Espindola, M. Andrejco, A. M. Vengsarkar,Broadband erbium-doped bre amplier attened beyond 40 nm using long-period grating lter, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., Vol. 9, pp. 1343-1345, 1997. [23] Y. Zhu, Fabrication of long-period gratings and their applications in optical bre communication and sensing systems, D.Phil Thesis, Rand Afrikaans University, South Africa, November, 2002. [24] Y. Zhu, L. Chao, B. M. Lacquet, P. L. Swart, Wavelength-tuneable add/drop multiplexer for DWDM using long-period gratings and bre strechers, Optics Communications, Vol. 208, pp. 337-344, July, 2002.

Ronnie Kritzinger (M1998) received the B.Ing degree in electrical engineering and B.Sc degree in information technology from the Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg, in 2002. He is currently working toward the M.Ing degree, and his primary research interest is optical communications for implementation in the telecommunications industry.