Coherent optical MIMO transmission over 20 km GI multi-mode fiber by using digital coherent receiver with mode convergence unit.

ABSTRACT

We describe a coherent optical MIMO transmission experiment that employs a digital coherent receiver with a mode convergence unit, which converges higher-order mode light into the fundamental mode while maintaining the phase and amplitude information of the higher-order mode. The coherent optical MIMO transmission of two 10 Gbit/s BPSK signals over 20 km of graded-index multi-mode fiber was successfully achieved by using this mode convergence unit. We also show numerically that multi channel signals for a coherent optical MIMO transmission can be recovered by employing sufficient mode diversity, even if mode conversion occurs in the transmission fiber.