Bandwidth increase has always been an important area of research in communications. A novel multiplexing technique known as Spatial Domain Multiplexing (SDM) has been developed at the Optronics Laboratory of Florida Institute of Technology to increase the bandwidth to T-bits/s range. In this technique, space inside the fiber is used effectively to transmit up to four channels of same wavelength at the same time. Experimental and theoretical analysis shows that these channels follow independent helical paths inside the fiber without interfering with each other. Multiple pigtail laser sources of exactly the same wavelength are used to launch light into a single carrier fiber in a fashion that resulting channels follow independent helical trajectories. These helically propagating light beams form optical vortices inside the fiber and carry their own Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM). The outputs of these beams appear as concentric donut shaped rings when projected on a screen. This endeavor presents the experimental outputs and simulated results for a four channel spatially multiplexed system effectively increasing the system bandwidth by a factor of four.

Date Published: 2 May 2012
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 8397, Enabling Photonics Technologies for Defense, Security, and Aerospace Applications VIII, 839703 (2 May 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.920812

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8397:
Enabling Photonics Technologies for Defense, Security, and Aerospace Applications VIII
Michael J. Hayduk; Peter J. Delfyett Jr.; Andrew R. Pirich; Eric Donkor, Editor(s)