Design and analysis of a broadband dispersion compensating photonic crystal fiber Raman amplifier operating in S-band

This paper presents an optimized design of a dispersion compensating photonic crystal fiber (PCF) to achieve gain-flattened Raman performances over S-band using a single pump. Genetic algorithm interfaced with an efficient full-vectorial finite element modal solver based on curvilinear edge/nodal elements is used as an optimization tool for an accurate determination of PCF design parameters. The designed PCF shows high negative dispersion coefficient (-264 ps/nm/km to-1410 ps/nm/km) and negative dispersion slope, providing coarse dispersion compensation over the entire S-band. The module comprised of 1.45-km long optimized PCF exhibits +/- 0.46 dB gain ripples over 50 nm wide bandwidth and shows a very low double Rayleigh backscattering value (-59.8 dB). The proposed module can compensate for the dispersion accumulated in one span (80-km) of standard single mode fiber with a residual dispersion of +/- 700 ps/nm, ensuring its applicability for 10 Gb/s WDM networks. Additionally, the designed PCF remains single mode over the range of operating wavelengths. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America.