16 x 10 Gb/s WDM transmission over 840-km SMF using eleven broad-band chirped fiber gratings

We demonstrate wavelength-division-multiplexed transmission of 16 10-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero channels with 50-GHz spacing over 840 km of conventional single-mode fiber (SMF), or 14 times the 10-Gb/s dispersion limit, using a total of eleven chirped fiber gratings for dispersion compensation. Each grating has a nominal dispersion of -1330 ps/nm km for compensating 80 km of SMF and a bandwidth of 6.5 nm, and one grating has additional dispersion slope compensation of -35 ps/nm/sup 2/ equivalent to 480 km of SMF. The large number of closely spaced wavelengths and long transmission distance significantly stress the wavelength uniformity, bandwidth, and cascadability of the fiber gratings.