An ultra-compact chromatic dispersion compensator, based on a compact arrowhead arrayed-waveguide grating (AWG), has been proposed and fabricated. A dispersion compensating mirror, monolithically integrated into the second slab of the AWG, modulates the phase of each spectral component of the input light. The use of the compact arrowhead structure provides a dispersion compensator with a small footprint. The chromatic dispersion, the bandwidth and the insertion loss of the dispersion compensator based on the 8ch, 12.5GHz-spacing high-resolution arrowhead AWG are 123ps/nm, 70GHz and 7.5dB, respectively. Dispersion compensation experiments for 40Gbit/s, NRZ and RZ signals have been successfully demonstrated.
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