Abstract
We present the theoretical study of polarization-maintaining multi-core few-mode fiber (PM MC-FMF) with a cladding diameter of 125 μm, in order to secure the maximum number of independent spatial channels arising in the single fiber. By taking both the inter-core crosstalk (XT) and the intra-core mode coupling into account, we identify that the PM five-core three-mode fiber is able to provide 19 parallel channels without the need of MIMO signal processing. After the numerical optimizations, the inter-core XT of MC-FMF is less than −30 dB/100km, due to the use of trench-assisted heterogeneous core distribution. Meanwhile, the effective refractive index (RI) differences among both spatial modes and polarization modes are more than 8 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">−4</sup> and 3.26 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">−4</sup> over the C+L band, respectively, due to the introduction of stress and geometric birefringence. Moreover, the cladding diameter of such MC-FMF is the same as that of the standard single-mode fiber (SSMF), leading to a convenient upgrading from the SSMF to the MC-FMF.
Highlights
With a rapid growth of Internet traffic, traditional standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) will encounter a capacity crunch under the limitation of the fiber nonlinearity [1]–[2]
We present the theoretical study of polarization-maintaining multi-core few-mode fiber (PM MC-FMF) with a cladding diameter of 125 μm, in order to secure the maximum number of independent spatial channels arising in the single fiber
The effective refractive index (RI) differences among both spatial modes and polarization modes are more than 8 × 10−4 and 3.26 × 10−4 over the C+L band, respectively, due to the introduction of stress and geometric birefringence
Summary
With a rapid growth of Internet traffic, traditional standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) will encounter a capacity crunch under the limitation of the fiber nonlinearity [1]–[2]. Five-core single-mode fiber can improve the number of parallel spatial channels by five times in comparison with traditional SSMF, it is still insufficient to satisfy the growing capacity demand. Without the help of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) signal processing, the severe mode coupling is challenging to be dealt with Both the heavy power consumption and the hardware complexity of MIMO signal processing prevent the number of guided modes for the mode-division multiplexing (MDM) transmission. Since the effective refractive index (RI) difference δneff between two polarization modes for such fiber is more than 1 × 10−4, the condition of polarization XT-free is satisfied [17] It cannot further increase the number of cores with the PM characteristic under the 125 μm cladding diameter, due to the joint constraints of inter-core XT and intra-core mode coupling. The PM five-core three-mode fiber is beneficial for the near future transmission system upgrading, because of both the same size of cladding diameter and the five-core arrangement
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