Design and fabrication of ultra-low crosstalk and low-loss multi-core fiber

TLDR

Designed a seven‑core trench‑assisted pure‑silica multi‑core fiber, deriving the relationship among crosstalk, fiber parameters, and bend using a new coupled‑mode theory approximation with an equivalent index model. The resulting fiber exhibited ultra‑low crosstalk (< −30 dB after 10 000 km) and very low attenuation (0.175–0.181 dB/km at 1550 nm), the lowest values reported for multi‑core fibers.

Abstract

We designed and fabricated a multi-core fiber (MCF) in which seven identical trench-assisted pure-silica cores were arranged hexagonally. To design MCF, the relation among the crosstalk, fiber parameters, and fiber bend was derived using a new approximation model based on the coupled-mode theory with the equivalent index model. The mean values of the statistical distributions of the crosstalk were observed to be extremely low and estimated to be less than -30 dB even after 10,000-km propagation because of the trench-assisted cores and utilization of the fiber bend. The attenuation of each core was very low for MCFs (0.175-0.181 dB/km at 1550 nm) because of the pure-silica cores. Both the crosstalk and attenuation values are the lowest achieved in MCFs.