Bend-insensitive single-mode photonic crystal fiber with ultralarge effective area for dual applications

Abstract

A novel photonic crystal fiber (PCF) having circular arrangement of cladding air holes has been designed and numerically optimized to obtain a bend insensitive single mode fiber with large mode area for both wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) communication and fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) application. The bending loss of the proposed bent PCF lies in the range of 10 −3 to 10 −4 dB / turn or lower over 1300 to 1700 nm, and 2 × 10 −4 dB/turn at the wavelength of 1550 nm for a 30-mm bend radius with a higher order mode (HOM) cut-off frequency below 1200 nm for WDM application. When the whole structure of the PCF is scaled down, a bending loss of 6.78 × 10 −4 dB / turn at 1550 nm for a 4-mm bend radius is obtained, and the loss remains in the order of 10 −4 dB / turn over the same range of wavelength with an HOM cut-off frequency below 700 nm, and makes the fiber useful for FTTH applications. Furthermore, this structure is also optimized to show a splice loss near zero for fusion-splicing to a conventional single-mode fiber (SMF).