Tutorial on fiber gratings in lightwave network applications

Summary form only given. Progress in fabrication methods has yielded optical performance in fiber Bragg gratings having no parallel in conventional filter technology. The ensuing stampede in fiber-grating applications has been difficult to follow as they range over many disciplines, from spectroscopy to sensors, from lasers to lightwave. In particular, the proliferation of lightwave network concepts has promoted sharp interest in the fiber Bragg grating and has led to remarkable advances. The tutorial summarizes the unique optical characteristics of the fiber grating in the context of lightwave systems and illustrates them with a variety of examples