Experimental Validation of Partitioned MIMO Equalizer with Low-Resolution Interface for Mitigation of Mode-Group Coupling in SDM Transmission over 3-Mode Fiber

We propose partitioned MIMO equalization with low-resolution, quantized interface between sub-equalizers for few-mode fiber systems. Experiments up to DP-64QAM yield OSNR-penalties $\lt 0.2 \mathrm{~dB}$ for 2…4-bit interface resolutions compared to high-resolution MIMO, depending on the cardinality. (c) 2025 The Authors