At OECC '99 in Beijing, researchers from Avanex Corp. of Fremont, Calif., and Fujitsu Laboratories of America Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., described a chromatic dispersion compensator for optical communications based on Fujitsu's virtually imaged phase-array technology. The device varies compensation from +660 ps/nm to -3160 ps/nm for more than 50 channels with 100-GHz spacing.

Masataka Shirasaki, a research fellow at Fujitsu Labs, said the compensator improves network performance without the nonlinear optical effects and bulk of dispersion-compensation fiber.

Avanex plans to sell the device in the first quarter.