Compensation of Chromatic Dispersion by Modal Dispersion in MMF- and VCSEL-Based Gigabit Ethernet Transmissions

Multimode vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) with large spectral widths are widely used with multimode fibers (MMFs) in Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) systems. MMFs exhibit large chromatic dispersion values that can strongly impact the performance of these systems for high bit rates and/or long distances. Here, we show that in 10-GbE systems using VCSELs and MMFs, the chromatic dispersion can be compensated for by the modal dispersion of the MMF.