A rigorous analysis of the intermodal delay in few-mode fibers

Abstract

© 2017, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science. The intermodal delay is one of the fundamental issues in the mode of transmission which limits the propagation distance of mode division multiplexing. In this paper the theoretical background and a numerical analysis of intermodal group velocity dispersion in step-index of few-mode fiber are given. The numerical analysis is based on the general solution of the characteristic equation for step-index few mode fiber in order to compute normalized propagation constant, group delay and finally the group delay difference between fundamental LP01 mode and three selected higher modes. It was found that the material dispersion is not a negligible part of the total intermodal delay and so it should be included.