Time Dispersion Properties of Cascaded Multimode Fiber Links

A general model for studying the time dispersion properties of cascaded multimode fiber links is presented. Fibers having different index profiles and misaligned joints are taken into acconnt. It is shown the the transit time of a ray in the first fiber is conserved and transferred to another ray in the second fiber, and so forth. Simple compensation formulas are derived for alpha-profile fibers. The lower limit to the total time dispersion, which is imposed by material dispersion, is also investigated.