Patent ID: 7079777

Claim:
An optical fiber communication system comprising: an optical transmitter; an optical receiver; and an optical oath between the transmitter and receiver, the optical path subject to unwanted polarization mode dispersion and chromatic dispersion, and disposed in the path between the transmitter and the receiver, a dispersion compensator having an input for receiving an optical signal and comprising a length of a high birefringence fiber and a linearly chirped fiber Bragg grating formed in the high birefringence fiber for compensating polarization mode dispersion without increasing chromatic dispersion, the high birefringence fiber having a birefringence, B, selected to compensate for differential group delay in the optical signal, wherein the birefringence, B, equals (DGD)/Dλ where DGD is differential group delay at the transmission input, D is the dispersion of the fixed fiber grating, and λ is the signal wavelength.