Advanced design of a multichannel fiber Bragg grating based on a layer-peeling method

Abstract

A multichannel fiber Bragg grating (FBG) design based on a discrete layer-peeling method is described. This novel method enables us to design any kind of multichannel FBG in which the spectrum responses of the channels can be either identical or nonidentical. In particular, a nine-channel dispersion-free FBG and a nine-channel nonlinearly chirped FBG used simultaneously as chromatic dispersion and dispersion slope compensators are described. Unlike the general multichannel FBG designed by a sampling method, these two gratings have ideal flat-topped profiles in both the transmission and the reflection spectra. By optimally detuning the relative phases for the multiple-spectrum channels with an iterative layer-peeling method, we can make maximum use of length-limited photosensitive fiber. Moreover, we show numerically that one can reduce or eliminate the oscillation that inherently exists in the index-change envelope of our multichannel FBG by accepting a decreased extinction ratio of the in-band signal to the out-of-band noises.