The new fiber has seven different cores through which light can travel, and each core can support three different spatial modes through space-division multiplexing (SDM).
Researchers are exploring SDM as a promising way to increase capacity and reduce costs for transmission systems in the future – when the capacity of fibers in the field has been exhausted.
The researchers describe the innovation as "going from a one-way road to a seven-lane highway," adding that the use of multiple spatial modes is "like three cars driving on top of each other in the same lane." Combining these two methods increases the fiber's transmission capacity by 21 times compared to standard single-core, single-mode optical fibers.
"This new type of fiber could be an answer to mitigating the looming optical transmission capacity crisis caused by ever-increasing bandwidth demand," the researchers said in a press release.
This is not the highest capacity reported to date over a single fiber. Last year, researchers from NEC and Corning reported transmitting 1.05 PBP over a single optical fiber containing twelve single-mode and two multimode cores.
The European MODE-GAP program, in which the COBRA Institute at Eindhoven University of Technology is active, is also studying SDM and several new fiber types.
Dutch and American researchers believe their particular fiber design shows promise. "At less than 200 microns in diameter, this fiber doesn't take up much more space than conventional fibers already deployed," said Dr. Chigo Okonkwo, an assistant professor in the Electro-Optical Communications (ECO) research group at TU/e.
"These remarkable results undoubtedly offer the possibility of achieving petabit-per-second transmission, which is the goal of the European Commission in the Horizon 2020 research program," he added.
