Single-mode fibers with intentionally induced periodical residual strains (IIPRS) along the fiber length are proposed for the suppression of the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). A change of the residual strain along a fiber will change the Brillouin frequency shift, resulting in a broadening of the Brillouin gain profile. Such an increase of the line-width of the gain profile will cause a decrease of the gain coefficient which will raise the threshold power of the stimulated Brillouin scattering in optical fibers. Two types of the IIPRS fibers were fabricated. The residual strain of one IIPRS fiber is modified rectangularly while that of the other is changed triangularly. The measured spectra of the SBS are compared with that of a fiber with a constant strain. Using a novel mathematical model presented in this report, the possible improvements of the threshold powers for these two IIPRS fibers over the constant-strain fiber can be assessed through the SBS spectra. Finally, the achieved improvements are confirmed with the experimental results. The estimated improvement of the threshold for the IIPRS fiber with the rectangular profile is 2.9dB while the measured is 2.4dB. In case of the IIPRS fiber with a triangular profile, the improvement of the threshold is 5.4dB by estimation and is 5.1dB by experiment. While the limit of the threshold improvement for rectangular IIPRS fibers is 3dB, the threshold improvement for triangular IIPRS fibers is limited only by the allowable deviation of the tension applied during the drawing of fibers. It is estimated that a 5dB improvement is not difficult to realize.

A novel technique is proposed to fabricate a chirped fiber Bragg grating utilizing thermal diffusion of core dopant. The chirped grating is written with a uniform period by using UV exposure technique in the fiber whose effective index of the guided mode varies along its length. Thermal diffusion of the core dopant it employed to realize this change of the effective index. Through the thermal diffusion process, the effective index of the fiber decreases from its initial value. When the grating is written in the diffused core region, its reflection wavelength becomes shorter than that in the non-diffused region. The continuous change of effective index is required for making a chirped grating. The fiber is heated by a non-uniform heat source. When the uniform grating is written in this region, the reflection wavelength smoothly changes along the fiber length although the grating period is constant. By optimizing the fiber parameters to realize a highly chirped grating, we have obtained a typical one whose bandwidth is 14.1 nm at half maximum and maximum rejection in transmission is 29 dB. Additionally, the proposed method has an advantage to control the chirp profile with high mechanical reliability.

According to the development of optical communication technologies, it is getting easier to handle new devices, such as optical fibers, semiconductor light sources, guided wave devices, and optical integrated circuits. These devices have recently given considerable impact on the optical sensing field. The optical sensing shares the optical devices and the concepts of signal processing or system configuration with the optical communication. In this paper, the advanced lightwave sensing technology is discussed, considering the relation to the advanced optical communication technology. Distributed fiber sensors and the application of coherence characteristics of semiconductor light sources are the topics to be mainly discussed. In the distributed fiber sensors, the fiber plays both a role of low-loss transmission line and a role of lengthwise deployed sensing element. According to the change of characteristics of light propagating in the fiber, distribution of various physical parameters can be measured, such as the fiber loss, temperature, and strain. Optical Time Domain Reflectometry is employed to determine the location. Another tendency in the lightwave sensing field is the use of coherence characteristics of various semiconductor light sources. Low coherent source provide a highly sensitive inertial rotation sensor, that is, interferometric fiber optic gyroscope. Another type of optical gyroscope, optical passive ring-resonator gyro, has been studied as an application of a high coherence source. Frequency tunability of the semiconductor laser, especially that of tunable DFB or DBR lasers, can provide new ways in signal processing in the sensors. Optical coherence function can be synthesized also by utilizing the tunability. In conjunction with the progress in optical communication, lightwave sensing fields are steadily increasing.

This paper proposes high-Q distributed constant passive devices using wafer-level chip scale package (WL-CSP) technology, which can be realized on a Si CMOS chip. A 90directional coupler using the WL-CSP technology has center frequency of 25.6 GHz, insertion loss of -0.5 dB and isolation of -29.8 dB in the measurement result. The WL-CSP technology contributes to realize low-loss RF passive devices on Si CMOS chip, which is indispensable to achieve small-size, cost-effective and low-power monolithic wireless communication circuits (MWCCs).

Long-period fiber gratings (LPGs) using a high-silica core fiber are presented. A high-silica core fiber has a residual stress in the core, and the grating structure is formed by stress releasing of the core using a focused CO2 laser beam. The dependence of the transmission spectrum on temperature and tensile strength is measured, and low dependence compared with conventional LPGs is observed. These unique characteristics are caused by the difference of temperature and tensile strength changes of the effective indices for the fundamental propagation mode and the cladding mode in the high-silica core fiber.

Optical waveguides are one of the key devices for photonic integrated circuits considered to be one of the candidates for optical interconnects. In particular lossless bend type waveguides are necessary to integrate different optical devices monolithically. In this paper, we report on the bending loss characteristics of the multi-quantum well bend waveguide with respect to the bend radius and lateral optical mode confinement. We show that to decrease the bending loss to less than 0.5 dB, it is necessary to increase either the confinement or the bend radius. For an example, when the confinement is around 85%, the bend radius should be more than 2 mm. We also show the application of the S-bend waveguides to directional coupler type optical switch.