Dispersion Compensation in Long Haul Transmission Systems - an Orthogonal Approach

An ideal dispersion compensator for long haul optical transmission would have no optical loss, be self-adapting to any fiber plant, on a rapid timescale, not introduce any penalty in sensitivity, and require no components between the transmitter and receiver. In this paper we discuss recent progress in optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM); a technique that approaches this ideal.