Fabrication and performance of packaged fibre gratings for telecommunications

Fibre gratings provide a reliable filter for telecommunications at a cost which is lower than any competing technologies. We are now able to produce fibre gratings with very high technical specifications in terms of wavelength characteristics and transmission loss. This paper discusses the performance that may be achieved from fibre gratings and the fabrication routes that are used to achieve components for use in the telecoms industry. Potential applications for fibre gratings are for channel selection in WDM systems, amplifier noise reduction, frequency stabilisation of transmitters, dispersion compensation and link supervision.