Proposal for highly birefringent broadband dispersion compensating octagonal photonic crystal fiber

•Negative dispersion coefficient of −400 to −725 ps/(nm km) over S and L-bands.•Birefringence of the order 1.81 × 10−2 is obtained at 1.55 μm.•The nonlinear coefficient is found 31.85 W−1 km−1 at 1.55 μm.•Effective dispersion of ±0.20 ps/(nm km) over S and L bands.•The proposed module can be used in 40 Gb/s (DWDM) systems.

In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a highly birefringent photonic crystal fiber based on a modified octagonal structure for broadband dispersion compensation covering the S, C, and L-communication bands i.e. wavelength ranging from 1460 to 1625 nm. It is shown theoretically that it is possible to obtain negative dispersion coefficient of about −400 to −725 ps/(nm km) over S and L-bands and a relative dispersion slope (RDS) close to that of single mode fiber (SMF) of about 0.0036 nm−1. According to simulation, birefringence of the order 1.81 × 10−2 is obtained at 1.55 μm wavelength. Moreover, effective area, residual dispersion, effective dispersion, confinement loss, and nonlinear coefficient of the proposed modified octagonal photonic crystal fiber (M-OPCF) are also reported and discussed.