RoF Data Transmission Using Four Linearly Polarized Vector Modes of a Polarization Maintaining Elliptical Ring Core Fiber

We experimentally investigate the feasibility of transmission of radio-frequency (RF) signals over a 900 m polarization-maintaining elliptical ring core fiber. No multiple-input-multiple output processing is used to recover the RF signals carried by different modes; we recover the 16 quadratic-amplitude modulation orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing RF signals with the same techniques used for single-mode fibers. For the first time, we report transmission of four RF streams over four channels in few-mode fibers. Also, for the first time, we transmit RF signals over two polarizations of a mode in few-mode fibers and successfully recover data in both polarizations without polarization tracking or digital signal processing to separate polarizations. Furthermore, we examine the impact of fiber bending on crosstalk among channels. We show that even under severe bending, the polarization states remain separated and the RF streams transmitted on polarization states of a mode could be recovered with low-power penalty.