Mode Coupling in Plastic Optical Fiber Enables 40-Gb/s Performance

Author

Polley, Arup ; Ralph, Stephen E.

Author_Institution

Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta

Volume

19

Issue

16

fYear

2007

Firstpage

1254

Lastpage

1256

Abstract

We report 40-Gb/s capability of 50-mum core plastic optical fiber using differential modal delay measurements and power penalty due to intersymbol interference computations. The results are explained via a comprehensive multimode fiber model that includes mode coupling (MC) and differential modal attenuation (DMA). We show that strong MC can enable 40-Gb/s transmission for reach in excess of 100 m even in the presence of irregularities in the refractive index profile that prevent 10-Gb/s performance without MC. Furthermore, we show that DMA effects are negligible and that the mode power distributions are not a good indicator of bandwidth.

Keywords

gradient index optics; optical fibres; refractive index; bit rate 40 Gbit/s; differential modal attenuation; differential modal delay measurements; intersymbol interference computations; mode coupling; multimode fiber model; plastic optical fiber; power penalty; refractive index profile; size 50 mum; Delay; Intersymbol interference; Optical attenuators; Optical computing; Optical coupling; Optical fibers; Plastics; Power distribution; Power measurement; Refractive index; Optical fiber communication;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2007.901743

Filename

4280880