Design & Solutions

James F. Brennan III

Modern communications system providers are striving to increase the capacity of their networks to satisfy the rapidly growing exchange of information around the world. Raising the data rate of a single-wavelength channel is one way to increase the throughput on optical fibers. However, this approach is limited because the data rate for a single optical channel will eventually reach practical limitations. An important strategy for further increasing the available bandwidth is to add multiple-wavelength channels through wavelength division multiplexing (WDM).

In WDM systems, challenges such as chromatic dispersion across multiple channels affect system performance. While dispersion-compensating fiber modules can manage the effects of dispersion, long-length fiber Bragg gratings are emerging as an alternative solution. Dispersion-compensators based on fiber Bragg gratings can correct for variations in dispersion across the communications bandwidth and can be customized to a given transmission fiber…