Abstract
The group-velocity dispersion (or chromatic dispersion) of fibers for transmission is one of the most crucial issues in high bit-rate transmission systems. As the bit-rate increases, the allowable range of group-velocity dispersion decreases substantially, and hence the bit-error rate performance can be easily perturbed due to the variation of the dispersion. For installation and reliable operation of such systems, the adaptive dispersion equalization, which can measure the accumulated dispersion of transmission systems and compensate for it so as to keep the total dispersion within the dispersion tolerance in real time, is of great importance. In this paper, we explain the adaptive dispersion equalization system and show recent research activities on in-service dispersion monitors and tunable dispersion compensators.
