10 Gbit/s transmission over 700 km of standard single mode fibre with a 10 cm chirped fibre grating compensator and duobinary transmitter

The advent of Er-doped fibre amplifiers makes optical fibre transmission in the 1.55 μm wavelength window very attractive. However, with the large amounts of standard non-dispersion shifted fibres (NDSF) already installed, high bit rate transmission is restricted by the large dispersion of these fibres at 1.55 μm, unless compensating techniques are used. A number of approaches have been put forward to address this issue. Of these, fibre gratings are attractive as they are passive, linear devices, highly dispersive yet compact and relatively easy to fabricate in large numbers. We demonstrate that 10 Gbit/s transmission up to 700 km of NDSF is achievable with a single 10 cm long chirped fibre grating in combination with a reduced bandwidth phase-alternating duobinary transmitter