Highly Spectral Efficient C + L-Band Transmission Over a 38-Core-3-Mode Fiber

High capacity transmission with a data rate over 10.66 Pb/s is demonstrated in a 13 km, 38-core-3-mode few-mode multi-core fiber. This was achieved with a single optical comb source to generate 368 × 24.5 GBaud 64- or 256-quadrature-amplitude-modulated signals in a 25 GHz wavelength channel grid in combination with a few-mode multi-core fiber with high uniformity amongst cores. We investigated essential transmission channel characteristics and found that mode-dependent loss strongly decreases the achievable data rates in some cores, while we did not observe a correlation between varying impulse response spread and data rate. We further did not find an influence of the (radial) position of a core within the cladding on the data rate. Finally, we explored the potential of multi-span transmission over the same fiber with transmission distances up to 65 km, showing a strong performance penalty from prototype components with sub-optimal transmission properties.