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Characterization of Anisotropic Leaky Mode Modulators for Holovideo
Published on: March 19, 2016
Impact of modulation bandwidth on multiplexing using principal modes in MMF links
Abstract:
Multimode fibers (MMFs) are widely used for short fiber links. However, the data rates through MMFs is limited owing to modal dispersion. The so-called "principal modes" (PMs) permit transmission and multiplexing through the MMFs without modal dispersion for small modulation bandwidths. For larger modulation bandwidths, however, they lose their dispersion-free nature. In this paper, we model the impact of modulation bandwidth and mode coupling strength on the performance of PMs. We develop a simulator that characterizes the dispersion and cross-talk of the PMs of few-mode and large-core graded-index MMFs with mode-dependent losses (MDL). Simulations reveal that for fibers without MDL, for modulation frequencies beyond 10 GHz diminishes the PMs' frequency response by more than 1 dB for 100 m in large-core MMF links and 10 km few-mode fiber links. With MDL, simulations reveal that for modulation bandwidths beyond 2 GHz diminishes the frequency response by 3 dB for a 1 km few-mode fiber and by more than 4 dB for a 1 km large-core multimode fiber. While multiplexing using PMs in large-core MMFs with MDL, we find that for modulation bandwidths beyond 3 GHz, the cross-talk is 20 dB in 1 km large-core MMF links, thereby limiting system performance.
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