Full C-band transmission at >50-Tb/s GMI rate over 557.6-km anti-resonant hollow-core fiber

Anti-resonant hollow-core fiber (AR-HCF) has emerged as a promising transmission medium for long-reach high-capacity optical fiber communications owing to its unique properties of low transmission loss, low nonlinearity, and low latency. In this Letter, we experimentally demonstrate a fully loaded C-band transmission with a generalized mutual information-estimated capacity of 50.14 Tb/s over a total fiber distance of 557.6 km based on a 21.9-km low-loss self-developed AR-HCF. The transmission is realized using a 32.8-km recirculating loop loaded with 120 wavelength channels on 50-GHz grids. To extend the loop length and improve system performance for convenient lab demonstration, we propose a recirculating loop architecture that leverages the intrinsically low Rayleigh backscattering of AR-HCF. To the best of our knowledge, this represents the highest reported C-band transmission capacity for HCF links exceeding 100 km.