Simple Multichannel Optical Equalizer Mitigating Intersymbol Interference for 40-Gb/s Nonreturn-To-Zero Signals

Abstract

We present a simple, silica waveguide optical equalizer that significantly mitigates intersymbol interference (ISI) impairments for many wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) channels simultaneously. We study the mitigation of ISI arising from band-limited transmitters, narrow-band optical filtering, chromatic dispersion, and polarization-mode dispersion (PMD). We demonstrate significant improvements, both single- and multichannel, at 40 Gb/s with a single, potentially set-and-forget device.