Abstract
The fabrication and tuning characteristics of a nonlinearly chirped fiber Bragg grating (FBG) are presented. A single mechanical PZT stretching element is used to tune the resonant wavelength of the device to alter the generated chirp in a nonlinear function for a given channel from 300 ps/nm up to 1000 ps/nm. The reflected power varies by only approximately 0.7 dB during tuning. This nonlinear FBG has a stable switching speed up to 100 Hz, which is sufficiently fast for active dispersion compensation in a circuit-switched optical systems. Such an active dispersion technique may be placed in optical nodes for high-robust performance. Although dispersion tuning from 300-1000 ps/nm is achieved, larger dispersion tuning ranges can be obtained.