Chromatic-dispersion compensator using virtually imaged phased array

A new method for chromatic-dispersion compensation is proposed and demonstrated. This method can produce a chromatic dispersion practically in a wide range from -2000 to +2000 ps/nm and can compensate simultaneously for the dispersion of over 60 wavelength channels with 100-GHz spacing in a wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) system that has a total bandwidth of over 50 nm. This method has further attractive features such as very small polarization-state dependence, mechanically variable chromatic dispersion, and potential for small packaging. It was experimentally confirmed that this method compensated for the chromatic dispersion accumulated through 110 km standard single-mode fiber (SMF) at 1.55-μm wavelength and that 10-Gb/s signal quality was clearly recovered after the 110-km transmission.