BER performance limitation of an optical link with multicore fiber (MCF) due to crosstalk caused by mutual coupling among the cores

Analysis is presented for an optical link by using a multicore fiber (MCF) considering the effect of mutual coupling among the fiber cores which results in optical crosstalk. Analysis is carried out to find the optical crosstalk power at the output of the multicore fiber (MCF) and the photocurrents due to optical signal and crosstalk at the output of the receiver low pass filter. The signal to crosstalk plus noise ratio (SCNR) and the bit error rate (BER) are then determined for a given data rate. The results show that there is significant amount of optical crosstalk at the output of the multicore fiber (MCF) and thus limits the maximum allowable transmission length at a given data rate. Further, crosstalk is found to be dependent on optical carrier wavelength and crosstalk is found to be minimum at certain wavelengths for a given number of cores of multicore fiber (MCF).