VCSEL-multimode optical fiber based links is the most successful optical technology in Data Centers. Laser-optimized multimode optical fibers, OM3 and OM4, have been the primary choice of physical media for 10 G serial, 4 x 10 G parallel, 10 x 10 G parallel, and 4 x 25 G parallel optical solutions in IEEE 802.3 standards. As the transition of high-end servers from 10 Gb/s to 40 Gb/s is driving the aggregation of speeds to 40 Gb/s now, and to 100 Gb/s and 400 Gb/s in near future, industry experts are coming together in IEEE 802.3bs 400 Gb/s study group and preliminary discussion of Terabit transmission for datacom applications has also been commenced. To meet the requirement of speed, capacity, density, power consumption and cost for next generation datacom applications, optical fiber design concepts beyond the standard OM3 and OM4 MMFs have a revived research and developmental interest, for example, wide band multimode optical fiber using multiple dopants for coarse wavelength division multiplexing; multicore multimode optical fiber using plural multimode cores in a single fiber strand to improve spatial density; and perhaps 50 Gb/s per lane and few mode fiber in spatial division multiplexing for ultimate capacity increase in far future. This talk reviews the multitude of fiber optic media being developed in the industry to address the upcoming challenges of datacom growth. We conclude that multimode transmission using low cost VCSEL technology will continue to be a viable solution for datacom applications.

Date Published: 7 February 2015
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 9387, Broadband Access Communication Technologies IX, 938705 (7 February 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2084729

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9387:
Broadband Access Communication Technologies IX
Benjamin B. Dingel; Katsutoshi Tsukamoto, Editor(s)