Dispersion compensation by active predistorted signal synthesis

Techniques for the synthesis of an optical signal predistorted to compensate for fiber dispersion are discussed theoretically. A scheme for very high bit rate (>10 Gbit/s) time-division-multiplexed transmission is proposed which neither requires extremely short pulse sources nor suffers from their inherent dispersion limitations. The rudimentary aspects of the techniques have been verified experimentally by demonstrating both enhanced and degraded transmission of a 4-GHz modulated signal at 1.55 μm over 10-30 km of optical fiber.