MDM transmission of CAP-16 signals over 11- km anti-bending trench-assisted elliptical-core few-mode fiber in passive optical networks

Mode-division multiplexing passive optical network (MDM-PON) is a promising scheme for next-generation access networks to further increase the transmission capacity and number of end-customers. In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate the implementation of MDM-PON architecture with the carrier-less amplitude/phase (CAP) modulation signals and two effectively separated spatial modes multiplexing transmission in an elliptical-core few-mode fiber (EC-FMF). The trench-assisted EC-FMF features favorable anti-bending performance with negligible power variations and stable mode intensity profiles under extreme bending conditions. Two spatial modes carrying CAP-16 signals for four users with net data rate of 5 Gb/s per user in the downstream transmission over 1.1-km EC-FMF is demonstrated. The measured mode crosstalk including mode (de)multiplexing and 1.1-km EC-FMF transmission is less than -18 dB and multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technique is not used in the experiment for simplicity. The measured optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) penalties for the downstream transmission without or with crosstalk at a bit-error rate (BER) of 3.8x10 -3 (7% forward error correction (FEC) threshold) are less than 1.8 dB and 3.1 dB, respectively. Larger transmission capacity and more users are expected when further employing higher dimension CAP signals and EC-FMF supporting more separable spatial modes.