Dispersion compensation of 16 ps pulses over 100 km of step-index fibre using cascaded chirped fibre gratings

A major limiting factor in upgrading the currently installed network of step-index (SI) fibre to high capacity operation in the 1550 nm spectral window is the high dispersion of the fibre in that region. Dispersion compensation using chirped photorefractive fibre Bragg gratings is one of the most promising techniques for overcoming this limitation. Currently, the relatively short length of the gratings produced (<10 cm) limits the amount of compensation possible. We demonstrate that by reflecting the data consecutively off several gratings it is possible to greatly increase this compensation and have obtained the propagation of 16 ps pulses over 100 km of SI fibre with minimal distortion