Dispersion compensation using a planar lightwave circuit optical equalizer

Abstract

We successfully demonstrate the effectiveness of a planar lightwave circuit (PLC) optical dispersion equalizer in a 2.5 Gb/s transmission experiment with a 40 km-long 1.3 μm zero-dispersion fiber at 1.55 μm. The dispersion equalizer consists of 5 Mach-Zehnder interferometers with asymmetrical arm lengths cascaded in series. The total insertion loss is 3.5 dB and the maximum dispersion value is 836 psec/nm in the 1.55 μm region.