Multicore Fibers and Single Source Transmitters
With the introduction of space-division multiplexing (SDM), the world has seen an explosion in reported records of data transmission throughput, such as the accomplishment of crossing the 1 Pbit/s border in 2012. As cost and energy consumption are becoming limiting factors in high-capacity systems, using fewer lasers with less energy consumption grows desirable and frequency comb based single source transmission has attracted great research interest.
Combining photonic-chip based frequency combs, and multicore fibers, with have demonstrated capacities of up to 661 Tbit/s in a 9.6 km, heterogeneous 30-core fibe.
Orbital Angular Momentum Modes for Communications
Space-division multiplexing (SDM), is a possible solution to the nonlinear limit, also known as the "capacity crunch", which is the maximum speed possible in current optical fibres. Using advanced fibres, supporting several spatial modes, a scheme known as mode-division multiplexing, can be used to increase this capacity limit. A possible set of modes is the orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes, which exploits twisted light to obtain orthogonal communications channels over kilometer length fibers, without requiring energy demanding MIMO processing.
