LiNbO/sub 3/ Mach-Zehnder modulators with fixed negative chirp

Negative chirp modulation of optical transmitters is needed for the optimal performance of high bit-rate transmission in optical fiber systems operating at nonzero dispersion window at 1.5 /spl mu/m. In this paper several approaches to achieving any fixed chirp value for LiNbO/sub 3/ modulators are proposed, Experimental results of impedance matched devices on x-cut lithium niobate with chirp values of /spl plusmn/0.7 and /spl plusmn/1.0 are presented. By tuning the modulators bias point, the chirp value can be adjusted linearly around the designed value without degrading other performances.