Ramped, unchirped fiber gratings for dispersion compensation

The effective medium method is used to analyze an unchirped fiber grating in which the coupling strength between the light field and grating is monotonically increasing with penetration depth into the grating. The potential use of this type of grating for dispersion compensation in intensity modulated optical systems is discussed. It is shown that, when this type of grating is used in reflection, appropriately designed linearly ramped gratings can be used to compensate fiber dispersion over a wide range of bandwidth-distance product values. In contrast, when the grating is used in transmission, there are strong limits on the bandwidth-distance product.