Optical Equalization for High-Bit-Rate Fiber-Optical Communications.

In a high-speed, long-haul, fiber-optic communication system, fiber dispersion can cause serious performance degradations. Here, we describe an optical equalizer consisting of a reflective cavity structure, which gives an all-pass amplitude response and a frequency-selective delay response. The equalizer is adaptive in the sense that the position of its periodic frequency response is optimally adjusted in real time.