Improving the performance of a 10 Gbit/s optical communication system with a thermally actuated chromatic dispersion compensator based on chirped fiber Bragg gratings

In this letter we describe the use of tunable chromatic dispersion compensator based on chirped fiber Bragg grating to improve the performance of a 10 Gbit/s optical fiber communication system. Tunable compensation is achieved by applying temperature gradients along the grating longitudinal axis. It is demonstrated that thermal gradients comprised between −40 and 40°C were able to change the grating dispersion from −84.88 to −218.30 ps/nm. Previously developed model that issued a BER variation on the system from 1.82 × 10 −12 to 1.62 × 10 −9 are consistent with the experimental evidences reported here. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 49: 124–127, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.22027