0.61 Pb/s S, C, and L-Band Transmission in a 125μm Diameter 4-Core Fiber Using a Single Wideband Comb Source
Benjamin J. Puttnam, Ruben S. Lúıs, Georg Rademacher, Lídia Galdino, Domaniç Lavery, Tobias A. Eriksson, Yoshinari Awaji, Hideaki Furukawa, Polina Bayvel, Naoya Wada
Abstract
We investigate high-throughput, multi-band transmission in a 4-core multi-core fiber (MCF) with the same 125 μm cladding diameter of standard single-mode fiber (SMF). A single wideband comb source is used to transmit up to 561 wavelength channels with 25 GHz spacing over a 120 nm bandwidth in S, C, and L bands. We demonstrate a maximum decoded throughput of 610 Tb/s in PDM-256QAM and PDM-64QAM signals over a 54 km fiber, transmitting more than 155 Tb/s in a single core and measuring a per-core average throughput exceeding record transmission demonstrations in SMF. In addition, we use noise loading measurements to characterize the achievable signal quality across the wideband transmitter. These results show that a single comb source can enable high-spectral efficiency modulation over wide bandwidths and further that low-core count homogeneous MCF technology can offer the same transmission performance as single-mode fibers without sacrificing mechanical reliability, and still offering the benefits of shared resources and greater efficiency that drives SDM technologies.