This paper reports on the bending loss insensitive single mode fiber suitable for access networks, which is applicable for wide wavelength use. Excellent attenuation stability of the fiber in the full spectrum range has been confirmed even in severe conditions such as fiber handling in mid-span access at aerial closure, cable installation/handling in indoor wirings and so on. Also, applications suitable for FTTH subscribers' use have been introduced.

The operation of a polarization mode dispersion (PMD) compensator using a polarizer and a Faraday rotator-based polarization controller (FRPC) is analyzed in detail, and the compensation performance is experimentally evaluated in 40 Gbit/s operation. The evaluation results show that a wide range of differential group delay over a bit period can almost be completely compensated using the PMD compensator. The characteristics of electrical spectrum-based signal monitoring methods are investigated in detail, and the results shows advantages of a low frequency band monitoring method that produces about double the wider dynamic range than a fundamental repetition frequency monitoring method. The automated PMD compensator using a polarizer and a FRPC driven by the low frequency band monitoring method is experimentally investigated using a terrestrial 40 Gbit/s wavelength division multiplexing system involving 350-km installed single-mode fibers. The PMD compensator produces highly stable signal performance in the field environment for a long term and reduces the standard deviation of the Q-factor distribution.

In this paper, an optical signal processing beam forming network (BFN) for two-dimensional (2-D) beam steering is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Two lightwaves, called the signal and reference, are both Fourier transformed, combined, and then down-converted into RF signals using an optical heterodyne technique. A simple combination of orthogonal one-dimensional position scannings of the signal and reference lightwaves generates RF signals with phase distributions for 2-D beam steering. The system operation and optical losses are theoretically analyzed. Using graded index fiber (GIF) lensed single mode fibers (SMFs), total optical loss of the sampling fiber array is evaluated to be 4.5 dB from the fiber to fiber loss measurements. Using an experimental optical signal processing BFN at 25 GHz, 2-D beam steering is demonstrated at 0, 10, 20, and 30through the measured amplitudes and phases of RF signals for 16 position sets of the signal and reference fibers. The proposed method has the potential to provide ultra-fast beam scanning by utilizing optical switching technologies.