Microbend optical fiber tapped delay line for gigahertz signal processing

Abstract

A single-mode optical fiber tapped delay line which utilizes microbend taps has been constructed. The taps are obtained simply and repeatably and are uniform to ±1 dB. A device with 19 taps and a 1-ns delay between taps was constructed. The average tap strength was 1.5%. The frequency response for the device has been measured and simple programmability has also been demonstrated. Extension of the procedure to devices with 102–103 taps and 100-ps time delays is possible.