World’s First Transmission of 1 Petabit/S Using a Single-Core Multimode Optical Fiber

• A world record transmission of 1 petabit per second in a multimode optical fiber increases the current record data rate in multimode optical fibers by more than 2.5 times.
• Wideband optical transmission in fibers with more 15 modes is demonstrated for the first time, enabled by mode multiplexers and a transmission fiber
• Optimized for high optical bandwidth.

This demonstration advanced high-density and large capacity transmission in optical fibers that can be produced with standard methods.

A group of researchers from the Network System Research Institute of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, Japan) led by Georg Rademacher, NOKIA Bell Labs (Bell Labs, USA) led by Nicolas K. Fontaine and Prysimian Group (Prysimian, France) led by Pierre Sillard succeeded in the world’s first transmission exceeding 1 petabit per second in a single-core multi-mode optical fiber. This increases the current record transmission in a multi-mode fiber by a factor of 2.5.

To date, transmission experiments in optical fibers supporting large number of modes was limited to small optical bandwidths. In this study, we demonstrated the possibility of combining highly spectral efficient wideband optical transmission with an optical fiber guiding 15 fiber modes that had a cladding diameter in agreement with the current industry standard of 0.125 mm. This was enabled by mode multiplexers and an optical fiber that supported wideband transmission of more than 80 nm over a distance of 23 km. The study highlights the large potential of single-core multi-mode fibers for high capacity transmission using fiber manufacturing processes similar to those used in the production of standard multi-mode fibers.

The results of this study were accepted for the post-deadline session at the 46th European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC 2020).