Optical multiplexing techniques and their marriage for on-chip and optical fiber communication: a review

Abstract

Herein, an attention-grabbing and up-to-date review related to major multiplexing techniques is presented which in-cludes wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), polarization division multiplexing (PDM), space division multiplexing (SDM), mode division multiplexing (MDM) and orbital angular momentum multiplexing (OAMM). Multiplexing is a mech-anism by which multiple signals are combined into a shared channel used to showcase the maximum capacity of the optical links. However, it is critical to develop hybrid multiplexing methods to allow enhanced channel numbers. In this re-view, we have also included hybrid multiplexing techniques such as WDM-PDM, WDM-MDM and PDM-MDM. It is prob-able to attain N×M channels by utilizing N wavelengths and M guided-modes by simply utilizing hybrid WDM-MDM (de)multiplexers. To the best of our knowledge, this review paper is one of its kind which has highlighted the most prom-inent and recent signs of progress in multiplexing techniques in one place.