Design of High-Density Cable Parameters for Controlling Spatial-Mode Dispersion of Randomly Coupled Multi-Core Fibers

Abstract

In this work, we propose design parameters for optimized high-density optical cables to control the spatial-mode dispersion (SMD) of randomly coupled multi-core fibers (MCF). The analytical results of our proposed cable demonstrated the controllability of the bending and twisting of the implemented optical fibers by means of tension that is applied for a bundled fiber while keeping the sufficient reliability. An optical characterization showed that appropriate cabling parameters resulted in SMD controllability and a 47% reduction of the SMD coefficient while avoiding undesired loss increase. C-L band transmission experiments using our optical cable showed no degradation of the Q-factor or mode-dependent loss (MDL). Our proposed cable design is beneficial for achieving an SMD-managed large-capacity and long-haul transmission link.