Abstract

It has been recognized that at data rates higher than 10 Gbit/s it will be necessary to provide tunable dispersion compensators (TDCs) in order to accommodate uncertainties and dynamic variations in link dispersion, and various tunable dispersion compensators have been demonstrated.¹ In order for such devices to be useful, the chromatic dispersion degradation of the data stream must be determined and used as a feedback signal to control the TDC. Various feedback signals are possible, including, bit error rate derived from forward-error correction algorithms, eye monitoring,² and schemes that rely on monitoring the RF spectrum of the detected bit stream after a fast photodetector.³

© 2002 Optical Society of America