Fiber chromatic dispersion imposes a fundamental limit on the maximum transmission distance of fiber optic communication systems. Previously, a Fabry-Perot filter has been used to compensate the chromatic dispersion of a single-channel fiber optic communication system. However, Fabry-Perot filters are periodic in nature. Thus, it would also be possible to use these filters for the dispersion compensation of multi-channel wavelength-division-multiplexed(WDM) systems. In this thesis, two types of Fabry-Perot etalon filters (transmissive and reflective types) are studied for the dispersion compensation of WDM systems. The optimum designs of these filters are proposed by analyzing their performances in WDM systems. The reflective type filter is complicate to fabricate, but is more efficient than the transmissive type filter for the dispersion compensation. For example, in a WDM system where each channel operates at 10 Gb/s, the maximum transmission distance can be extended to 380 km by using 10 concatenated reflective-type filters. Although the transmissive type filters are extremely simple to fabricate, they can not be used in concatenation due to the distortion. The maximum transmission distance of a WDM system, operating at 10 Gb/s per channel, could be extended by about 36 % using a single transmissive-type Fabry-Perot filter.
