Two mode transmission at 2×100 Gb/s, over 40 km-long prototype few-mode fiber, using LCOS-based programmable mode...

Area of Science:

• Optical communications
• Photonics
• Telecommunications engineering

Background:

• Mode division multiplexing (MDM) is a promising technique to increase optical fiber capacity.
• Existing MDM systems face challenges in component complexity and performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To experimentally demonstrate a novel optical transmission system for MDM.
• To evaluate the performance of the proposed system for high-speed data transmission.

Main Methods:

• Developed a novel optical transmission system utilizing a programmable liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) based mode multiplexer/demultiplexer.
• Employed a prototype few-mode fiber (FMF) and a 4x4 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) algorithm.
• Utilized two polarization diversity coherent receivers to process data streams.

Main Results:

• Successfully transmitted two 100 Gb/s polarization division multiplexing quadrature phase-shift keying (PDM-QPSK) data streams over two different modes of the FMF.
• Achieved Q(2)-factors approximately 1 dB above the forward error correction (FEC) limit after 40 km transmission.

Conclusions:

• The novel optical transmission system effectively demonstrates the feasibility of MDM.
• The system shows potential for future high-capacity optical communication networks due to its performance.