# Ultra-Bend-Resistant 4-Core Simplex Cable Used for Short-Reach Dense Spatial Division Multiplexing Optical Transmission

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a 4-core optical cable that resists bending and supports high-density optical transmission for short distances.

## Contribution

The novel 4-core simplex cable design achieves ultra-bend resistance and low cross-talk for dense spatial division multiplexing.

## Key findings

- The cable achieved a maximum added cross-talk of 1.17 dB/km with a 6 mm bending radius.
- A macro-bending loss of 0.37 dB/10 turns was measured, showing excellent bending resistance.
- Low bit error rate transmission was demonstrated over 1.2 km using a 100GBASE-LR4 transceiver.

## Abstract

We optimized and fabricated an ultra-bend-resistant 4-core simplex cable (SXC) employing 4-core multicore fiber (MCF) suitable for short-reach dense spatial division multiplexing (DSDM) optical transmission in the O-band. The characteristics of transmission loss, macro-bending and cross-talk (XT) between adjacent cores after cabling were firstly clarified. By introducing the trapezoid index and optimizing the cabling process, the maximum values of added XT of 1.17 dB/km due to 10 loops with a bending radius of 6 mm imposed over the 4-core SXC and a macro-bending loss of 0.37 dB/10 turns were, respectively, achieved.P Then, the optical transmission with low bit error rate (BER) was presented using a 100GBASE-LR4 transceiver over the 1.2 km long 4-core SXC. The excellent bending resistance of the 4-core SXC may pave the way for a reduction in space pressure and increase in access density on short-reach optical interconnect (OI) based on DSDM.