SPATIALLY MULTIPLEXED BEAM COMBINING AND BEAM SEPARATOR MODULES FOR OPTICAL COMMUNICATION BANDWIDTH ENHANCEMENT

摘要

Spatial domain multiplexing (SDM) is a novel multiplexing scheme that significantly increases the bandwidth of optical communication systems by allowing simultaneous propagation of multiple channels of the same wavelengths over a single fiber. All components of this system are common to any standard optical communications system with the exception of two modules; (a) the beam combiner module and (b) the beam separator module. This endeavor reports the construction of simple beam combiner modules for multiplexing four SDM channels onto a 1000μm carrier fiber and two SDM channels on a 62.5/125μm standard multimode carrier fiber. Experimental results and simulated beam profiles are presented and finally a simple bulk optics based beam separator module is introduced.