High-capacity bi-directional full-duplex transmission based on fiber-eigenmode multiplexing over a FMF with 2×2 MIMO.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate symmetrical (homo-modal) and asymmetrical (hetero-modal) full-duplex bi-directional architectures based on dual-vector eigenmodes multiplexing over a 3 km few mode fiber (FMF). Firstly, 4 vector modes (VMs) of 2 mode groups (MGs), l = 0 (HE11o and HE11e modes) and l = +2 (EH11o and EH11e modes), each carrying a 14 GBaud quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) signal, are utilized in the up and down links and a 224 Gb/s same-mode bi-directional transmission is successfully realized. The crosstalk between the VMs in l = 0 and l = +2 of this full-duplex system is less than −13.8 dB. To strengthen the immunity to performance degradation induced by connector reflection and back scattering, we propose an effective approach to mitigate impairments by using hetero-modes on two terminals of the bi-directional system. Then, 2 VMs of l = 0 and 2 VMs of l = +2 are respectively employed in the up and down streams. The channel isolation between the VMs in l = 0 and l = +2 of such full-duplex link is larger than 19 dB, which supports a 448 Gb/s bi-directional transmission with 28 GBaud 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) modulation over a 3 km FMF by using 2 × 2 MIMO. Moreover, mode-wavelength division multiplexing including 2 modes and 4 wavelengths in both up and down streams is implemented in the transmission system. A total capacity of the 1.792 Tb/s link with 28 GBaud 16-QAM signal over each channel is successfully realized over the 3 km FMF. The measured bit-error-ratios (BERs) of all channels are below the 7% hard decision forward error correction (FEC) threshold at 3.8 × 10−3. The experimental results adequately indicate that such a scheme has a great potential in high-speed bi-directional point-to-point (P2P) optical interconnects.