Photonic crystal fiber as dispersion compensator

The demand for high data rate on optical fiber networks is ever increasing. Dispersion is the major limiting factor for the data rate of an optical fiber link. Present day dense wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks need very stringent dispersion management criteria. Within the two decades of commercial deployment of optical fiber links, dispersion phenomenon is well understood and different methods for combating the pulse spreading due to dispersion are developed. In the recent years, a special class of optical fibers known as photonic crystal fibers (PCF) is widely being explored for its dispersion compensating properties. PCFs offer a very large negative dispersion which can be readily varied by changing their design geometry. In this paper, we present two PCF designs and show the large negative chromatic dispersion offered by them.