Abstract

There has been a recent surge in the development of dispersion-compensating fibers (DCFs) for upgrading 1.31-μm systems to high-bit-rate systems operating at 1.55 μm; these DCFs have relied on refractive-index-profile designs^1–3 or on the use of higher-order modes close to cutoff⁴ for compressing broadened pulses back to their original pulse widths. In this paper we present experimental results of three fiber designs that use the fundamental mode, and we discuss the parameters that affect their performance. Dispersion and loss values for the fibers are given, and their use in both digital and analog systems is described.

© 1994 Optical Society of America