Single-mode fibers are generally used for long distance passive optical networks. Is it possible to use photonic crystal fiber instead of single mode fiber? What are the possible difficulties if we use the same?
The most important requirement for long-haul fiber communications is low loss, and here standard single-mode fiber is still the best - all PCFs to date have larger losses. There is however a lot of current research on using PCFs for optical communications, where the larger loss is made up by other performance improvements.
- Multimode and/or multicore fibers. Here several spatial transmission channels are used in the same fiber, which improves overall capacity.
- Hollow-core photonic bandgap fibers. These still currently have about 3dB/km loss, but they have much lower nonlinearity than solid fibers, so one can use higher transmission powers to overcome loss. Nonlinearity is also known to limit the (theoretical) Shannon limit for fiber capacity because of nonlinear noise, and thus hollow fibers may help.
- Hollow-core PCFs are also considered in situations where transmission speed is crucial (speed of light in glass is slower than in air/vacuum), see e.g. Nature Photon 7, 279 (2013)
Yes, this is possible but is very expensive because the costo of thif PCF have a high cost. This fiber have very adventages over a smf28, A example of this, is your implementation in dispersion management.
There are three mayor barriers for the PCF in long-haul: price, price and... price.
Agree with all above. Based on my industrial experience, I'd say that a product should have a right spec at a right price. However, the right spec doesn't automatically mean the best spec which may sound a bit counter-intuitive to an academic scholar. On a number of occasions (I'm trying to be general), one can even sacrifice a bit the spec in order to get the best right price. And guess what?... The right price is the lowest price.
Speaking of PCF, while their losses are getting down to respectable 2-3 dB/km, it's still too far from 0.2 dB/km @1.55 um for a conventional silica fiber. Also, even though PCF can be drawn from a preform (which is a BIG practical advantage over other periodic PBG structures) the cost is still too high to be competitive on the long-haul market. So, both (spec and price) have to evolve considerably...
By the present fabrication technology used for PCFs, it seems not possible to draw long length to be economical, so long way to go.
Modern single mode comms fibres are a bit like rail tracks; already well optimised, low cost and simple, so resources are better spent on improving what is carried over them. So fully coherent exotic modulation formats are the way to go.
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