Field Trials of Communication and Sensing System in Space Division Multiplexing Optical Fiber Cable

Space division multiplexing (SDM) technology has become a research hotspot, which can increase the transmission capacity extensively and is supposed to be the next generation of the optical communication technology. Although it has been demonstrated technically in the laboratory, SDM based on multicore optical fiber still lacks of convinced field trails as demonstration and verification to commercialize such technology. In this work as a field test, we deployed a seven-core optical fiber cable for application in the practical scenarios and successfully demonstrated large capacity SDM communication system, reaching a capacity of 234 Tb/s (net 187.49 Tb/s) and achieving the capacity-distance product of 61.87 Pb/s·km (net 49.50 Pbit/s·km) in one strand of fiber just in C band. To our knowledge, it is the largest capacity in the world based on the deployed SDM multicore optical fiber cable. Additionally, we further showed the utilization in sensing that monitors the traffic surrounding the deployed seven-core fiber cable. It is knowledgeable that SDM technology requires plenty of evident verifications to overcome technical and engineering issues prior to practical deployment, and the successful field test with promising results shows its great potential of employing SDM technology in a demand of large capacity and smart city, moving it toward commercialization.