Dispersion, birefringence, and amplification characteristics of newly designed dispersion compensating hole-assisted fibers

Abstract

We propose a new design of hole-assisted fiber (HAF) that can compensate for the accumulated dispersion in single-mode fiber link along with dispersion slope, thus providing broadband dispersion compensation over C-band as well as can amplify the signal channels by utilizing the stimulated Raman scattering phenomena. The proposed dispersion-compensating HAF (DCHAF) exhibits the lowest dispersion coefficient of -550 ps/nm/km at 1550 nm with an effective mode area of 15.6 microm(2). A 2.52 km long module of DCHAF amplifies incoming signals by rendering a gain of 4.2 dB with +/-0.8 dB gain flatness over whole C-band. To obtain accurate modal properties of DCHAF, a full-vector finite element method (FEM) solver is employed. The macro-bend loss characteristics of the proposed DCHAF are evaluated using FEM solver in cylindrical coordinate systems of a curved DCHAF, and low bending losses (<10(-2) dB/m for 1 cm bending radius) are obtained for improved DCHAF design while keeping intact its dispersion compensation and Raman amplification properties. We have further investigated the birefringence characteristics that can give significant information on the polarization mode dispersion of DCHAF by assuming a certain deformation (eccentricity e = 7%) either in air-holes or in the doped core or in both at a same time. It is noticed that the distortion in air-holes induces a birefringence of 10(-5), which is larger by a factor of 10 than the birefringence caused due to the core ellipticity. A PMD of 11.3 ps/ radicalkm is obtained at 1550 nm for distorted air-holes DCHAF structure.