Weakly-coupled mode division multiplexing over conventional multi-mode fiber with intensity modulation and direct detection

Abstract

Multi-mode fiber (MMF) links are expected to greatly enhance capacity to cope with rapidly increasing data traffic in optical short-reach systems and networks. Recently, mode division multiplexing (MDM) over MMF has been proposed, in which different modes in MMF are utilized as spatial channels for data transmission. Strongly-coupled MDM techniques utilizing coherent detection and multiplex-input-multiplex-output (MIMO) digital signal processing (DSP) are complex and expensive for short-reach transmission. So the weakly-coupled approach by significantly suppressing mode coupling in the fiber and optical components has been proposed. In this way, the signals in each mode can be independently transmitted and received using conventional intensity modulation and direct detection (IM-DD). In this paper, we elaborate the key technologies to realize weakly-coupled MDM transmission over conventional MMF, including mode characteristic in MMF and weakly-coupled mode multiplexer/demultiplexer (MUX/DEMUX). We also present the up-to-date experimental results for weakly-coupled MDM transmission over conventional OM3 MMF. We show that weakly-coupled MDM scheme is promising for high-speed optical interconnections and bandwidth upgrade of already-deployed MMF links.