Effectively tunable dispersion compensation based on chirped fiber Bragg gratings using electroactive polymer

摘要

A systematic method of tunable dispersion compensation based on chirped fiber Bragg gratings (CFBGs) using electroactive polymer (EAP) as drive device will be proposed. The EAP offer attractive properties of energy transduction from the electrical to the mechanical form for actuator with high active stresses (up to order of IMPa), low response times, high reliability, high stability and low costs. The special tune device is consisted of a straight beam and two EAP actuators, the CFBG is surface-mounted on one side of the beam. The midpoint of the grating is consistent with the center of the beam. When the EAP is imposed on voltage, the specially designed mechanical device can control the chirping ratio along the fiber gratings and consequently the group delay. The group delay can be linearly controllable since the device induce the linear strain gradient with the input voltage. The dispersion value can be effectively controlled in corresponding to the input voltage. The resonant wavelength shift of CFBG is less than 0.05 nm over the dispersion tuning range.