CHROMATIC DISPERSION COMPENSATION IN COHERENT OPTICAL COMMUNICATIONS

Chromatic dispersion compensation techniques in coherent transmission systems are reviewed and discussed for potential feasibility. The key compensation device is the wide-band delay equalizer. It is shown that stripline-type delay equalizers have the potential for compensating distortion up to 10 Gbit/s using a conventional 1.3-μm zero-dispersion single-mode fiber at 1.55 μm. Chromatic dispersion is successfully compensated with a stripline delay equalizer for CPFSK transmission at 4 and 8 Gbits/s over 200 km of 1.3-μm zero-dispersion single-mode fiber at 1.55 μm. The bandwidth requirement of the compensation techniques for heterodyne detection is more than 10 GHz. However, it is difficult to realize such broad-band receivers. Therefore, phase diversity detection with dispersion compensation is a promising scheme. © 1990 IEEE