Invited PapersStrongly-coupled multi-core fiber and its optical characteristics for MIMO transmission systems

- We review recent progress on coupled multi-core fiber (MCF) technologies.
- We describe the mode coupling mechanism in strongly coupled MCF.
- We present experimental results for our strongly coupled 2-core fiber.

We review recent progress on coupled multi-core fiber (MCF) technologies for optical multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission. First, we define types of MCF, namely non-coupled/coupled single-/few-mode MCF, and briefly report recent work on non-coupled/coupled MCF. We next describe the advantage of using coupled MCF in MIMO transmission systems, and present a coupled MCF design based on an analysis of coupling between super-modes in twisted bent MCF. We finally describe our experimental results for our strongly coupled MCF and its applicability for optical MIMO transmission systems.