42-Gb/s Transmission Over Large-Core 1-mm PMMA Graded-Index Polymer Optical Fiber

The authors report on very high-speed data transmission over a large-core 1-mm polymethylmetacrylate (PMMA) polymer optical fiber (POF) using pulse amplitude modulation. A high-speed large-area \varnothing 400 μm photoreceiver based on a gallium-arsenide metal-semiconductor-metal photodetector (PD) is used in order to reach the next major hurdle of 40 Gb/s over 1-mm PMMA POF. With this transmission setup record bit rates between 42 and 36 Gb/s were achieved over 1 to 10 m.