The generation of high-quality self-similar ultrashort pulses at 1550 nm by tapering the photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) is numerically demonstrated. We taper the PCF to achieve the exponentially decreasing dispersion and exponentially increasing nonlinearity profiles, which turn out to be the fundamental requirements for generating the chirped self-similar pulses. Further, we find that the chirped solitons could also be generated with the other three possible exponential variations. Thus, for the first time, we attempt tapering the PCFs for bringing in these exponentially varying dispersion and nonlinear profiles. We carry out the detailed pulse compression studies for various decay rates of the dispersion profiles as the decay rates of dispersion depend on the initial chirp and hence on compression factor, too. The unique feature of this pulse compressor lies in the fact that the required length of the tapered PCF is about 20 times less than that of the previously reported pulse compressor operating at 850 nm. © 2016 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).