Non-linearly chirped arrayed-waveguide grating configuration for third-order adaptive dispersion compensation

Summary form only given. As single-channel bit-rates increase towards 1 Tb/s, higher-order dispersion compensation (DC) is becoming increasingly necessary. We have already discussed the use of concatenated linearly-chirped AWGs for 2/sup nd/-order active DC. Here, we describe for the first time, the use of concatenated parabolically-chirped AWGs for active 3/sup rd/-order DC. Higher-order chirping of a single AWG has been proposed for higher-order DC, however, in this paper we show this can be achieved only by the appropriate concatenation of such devices.