Sheldon McLaughlin

Tunable dispersion and dispersion slope compensators for 10 Gb/s using all-pass multicavity etalons

We propose and demonstrate a novel approach to multichannel tunable dispersion compensation based on multicavity etalons that can compensate all channels throughout the C- or L-band with either 50- or 100-GHz channel spacings for 10-Gb/s applications. We demonstrate very low group delay ripple, large tuning range, as well as dispersion slope compensation for LEAF and TrueWave RS fiber across the L-band. In addition, we indicate that scaling the bandwidth for 40-Gb/s applications is readily achievable.

Tunable dispersion compensation at 40-Gb/s using a multicavity etalon all-pass filter with NRZ, RZ, and CS-RZ modulation

We present a multichannel tunable dispersion compensator (TDC) based on multicavity all-pass etalons that is capable of operation at 40 Gb/s. The device has a tuning range of +200/-220 ps/nm with a group delay ripple < /spl plusmn/5 ps over a channel bandwidth of 80 GHz, an overall loss of < 5.2 dB, very low insertion loss ripple, and can operate on any channel on a 200-GHz grid over the C-band. In addition, we present system performance results at 40 Gb/s using NRZ, RZ, and CS-RZ modulation, compensating up to 45 km of nonzero dispersion shifted fiber (NZDSF). Our results show that this device introduces very little excess system penalty with signal frequency drifts of up to 20 GHz when operated near the center of its tuning range. For single channel experiments with fiber, the system penalty increase versus signal detuning is more significant, but can be reduced by dynamically optimizing the device dispersion during detuning. Finally, we demonstrate simultaneous compensation of 4 channels across the C-band over 25 km of NZDSF.

WSS Switching Engine Technologies

Various switching engines such as MEMS, liquid crystal, and phased arrays, can be used to implement a colorless WSS. Switching engine affect on device design characteristics and implications on specifications for future applications are discussed.

Multichannel tunable dispersion compensation using all-pass multicavity etalons

We have proposed and demonstrated a novel approach to multi-channel tunable dispersion compensation using all-pass multi-cavity etalon filters for 10 Gb/s applications.