Sampled nonlinearly-chirped fiber-Bragg-grating for the tunable dispersion compensation of many WDM channels simultaneously

We have fabricated and characterized a tunable dispersion compensator that utilizes a specially designed sampled nonlinearly-chirped fiber Bragg grating (FBG), which is suitable for wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) channels. The dispersion can be tuned from 200 to -1200 ps/nm. We experimentally demonstrated tunable dispersion compensation using the sampled nonlinearly chirped FBG in a 10-Gbit/s WDM system. All three channels achieve BER=10/sup -9/ after both 60 km and 120 km of SMF by tuning the dispersion of the grating between -550 and -1100 ps/nm.