ABSTRACT

Optical fiber is one of the most efficient media for transmitting temporal information to date. However, so far it has not been possible to use it for transmitting spatial information efficiently. Although, in principle, multimode fiber offers high space-bandwidth products (roughly equal to the number of the modes), transmitting spatial information is still beyond the reach of practical reality. This is mainly due to the modal coupling and modal dispersion for which the transmitted spatial information will be severely scrambled. With present techniques, it is difficult, or impossible, to unwrap the scrambled signal.