Design considerations of depressed clad W-shaped single mode dispersion compensating fibers

Dispersion compensating fibers (DCFs) are being widely used as dispersion compensation techniques because of its superior characteristics. This work reports the theoretical modelling of a single mode DCF having W-shaped shallow as well as deeply depressed clad profile. The DCFs have been designed and optimized by suitable adjusting different fiber parameters such as, central relative index difference (Δ+), inner core radius (a), depression depth parameter (ρ), normalized end position of the depressed clad (p  ), etc. at a given spot size (W¯). The figure of merit (FOM) characteristics including the bend loss as well as other losses associated with fiber manufacturing technique have been thoroughly investigated. Performances of these DCFs for recent wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission system have also been discussed. By adjusting different fiber parameters, the effective core area (Aeff) of the above DCFs can be controlled to minimize the effect of non-linearities on them.