Figure-of-Merit of Dispersion Compensating Devices Based on Chirped Bragg Gratings

A promising technology for chromatic dispersion compensation in fiber communication networks are modules based on chirped Bragg gratings (DCM). Imperfections in the Bragg grating, however, give rise to a noise-like ripple in the phase characteristics of the DCM, which causes extra system penalty. In this paper, we derive an analytic formula that calculates an upper bound of the eye-opening penalty caused by a DCM in a transmission link with no optical amplifiers and with a chirp free NRZ optical signal. The primary use of this formula is as a quickly calculated quality measure (figure-of-merit) of the phase ripple characteristics of DCMs. It is shown that the difference in as given by the formula and obtained from simulation calculations is considerable smaller than given by other formulas found in the literature.