658 JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 30, NO.

4, FEBRUARY 15, 2012

Space Division Multiplexed Transmission of 109-Tb/s

Data Signals Using Homogeneous Seven-Core Fiber
Jun Sakaguchi, Member, IEEE, Yoshinari Awaji, Member, IEEE, Naoya Wada, Member, IEEE, Atsushi Kanno,
Tetsuya Kawanishi, Senior Member, IEEE, Tetsuya Hayashi, Member, IEEE, Toshiki Taru, Tetsuya Kobayashi, and
Masayuki Watanabe

Abstract—We achieved record 109-Tb/s transmission over

16.8 km, using space division multiplexing (SDM) together with
conventional multiplexing technology. 7-core SDM, 97 WDM
(100-GHz spacing), 2 86 Gb/s PDM-QPSK signals were used.
The spectral efficiency was 11.2 b/s/Hz. SDM transmission was
realized using a multi-core fiber with ultra-low-crosstalk (less
than dB/km at 1550 nm) and high performance SDM
MUX/DEMUX. The overall SDM crosstalk of dB caused
almost no penalty for the PDM-QPSK transmission.
Index Terms—Fiber optics, quadrature phase-shift keying, space
division multiplexing, wavelength division multiplexing.

I. INTRODUCTION

S PACE division multiplexing (SDM) is one of the core tech-

nologies to be used as a solution to the upcoming capacity
crunch issue [1]–[3]. As the nonlinearity of optical fibers be-
comes a major obstacle to large-scale, high spectral efficiency
data transmission using multi-level modulation [4], [5], spa-
tial dimensions of optical fibers in future capacity-consuming
networks should be managed in more efficient ways than the
present one. The suggested solutions, schematically drawn in
Fig. 1, include large effective-area optical fibers [6], (spa-
tial) mode division multiplexing using multi-mode (few-mode)
fibers [7]–[9], and SDM using multi-core fibers (MCFs). At
present, highest spatial efficiency is expected for SDM using
7-core fibers, which have been intensively studied and devel-
oped in this few years.
Development of MCFs was immediately followed by
demonstration of SDM transmission. Table I summarizes the
reported 7-core MCF transmission results including short-reach
applications to the authors’ knowledge [10]–[16]. As seen in
the table, SDM transmission in the early stage was performed
under severe constraints on wavelength and distance due to
large inter-core crosstalk of the MCFs. Inter-core crosstalk was
intensively studied, meanwhile, and drastically reduced through
Manuscript received July 15, 2011; revised October 26, 2011, December 06,
2011; accepted December 07, 2011. Date of publication January 16, 2012; date
of current version February 01, 2012.
J. Sakaguchi, Y. Awaji, N. Wada, A. Kanno, and T. Kawanishi are
with the Photonic Network Research Institute, National Institute of In-
formation and Communications Technology (NICT), Tokyo 184-8795,
Japan (e-mail: jsakaguchi@nict.go.jp; yossy@nict.go.jp; wada@nict.go.jp;
kanno@nict.go.jp; kawanish@nict.go.jp).
T. Hayashi and T. Taru are with the Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd., Yoko-
hama 244-8588, Japan (e-mail: t-hayashi@sei.co.jp; taru-toshiki@sei.co.jp).
T. Kobayashi and M. Watanabe are with the Optoquest Co., Ltd.,
Saitama 362-0021, Japan (e-mail: kobayashi_tetsuya019@optoquest.co.jp;
watanabe_masayuki034@optoquest.co.jp).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JLT.2011.2180509
Fig. 1. Efficient use of spatial dimensions. (a) Using large fiber, (b) mode
division multiplexing, (c) space division multiplexing.
structure optimization and handling bend effects [17]–[26].
With the benefit of ultra-low-crosstalk 7-core MCF [22], [24],
authors demonstrated large-scale SDM transmission exceeding
the capacity of conventional fibers (about 100 Tb/s so far [27])
for the first time [16].
In this paper, we report detailed results of 109-Tb/s
SDM transmission (7 SDM 97 wavelength division mul-
tiplexing (WDM) 2 polarization division multiplexing
(PDM) 86 Gb/s quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK))
performed with longer data pattern (from -bit- and
-bit-length pseudo random bit sequence (PRBS) pattern
to -bit-length PRBS pattern) and reduced detection
errors than in [16]. Section II briefly reviews the capacity
crunch issue. Section III describes the low-crosstalk MCF and
SDM MUX/DEMUX. Section IV provides details of SDM
transmission setup and results. In Section V we discuss the
possibility of future extensions. Finally, we summarize the
paper in Section VI.
II. CAPACITY CRUNCH
Global Internet traffic has been in a continuous inflation
throughout its history. A moderate forecast of the traffic growth
rate amounts to 32% per year [28]. The primal driving force
is considered to be Internet videos. Huge bandwidth will
become necessary as future video images require high resolu-
tion, quality, and dimension. As a result, over-Pb/s backbone
networks are likely to be necessary after two decades.

0733-8724/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

SAKAGUCHI et al.: SPACE DIVISION MULTIPLEXED TRANSMISSION OF 109-TB/S DATA SIGNALS USING HOMOGENEOUS SEVEN-CORE FIBER
TABLE I
RECENTLY REPORTED 7-CORE MCF TRANSMISSION
Fig. 2. History of transmission capacity per fiber.
Unfortunately, capacity of optical fiber links cannot be
infinitely increased. Fig. 2 summarizes the history of trans-
mission capacity. The growth rate from 1.1 Tb/s on 1996 [29]
to 101.7 Tb/s on 2011 [27] amounts to 35% per year, but the
growth was step-like rather than continuous. Especially long
stagnation was found after 2001, when increasing number of
WDM carriers entirely consumed C-, L-, and even S-band of
the fiber amplifier bandwidths. Multi-level modulation and
forward error correction (FEC) were required to overcome this
first barrier of 11 Tb/s [30], and increments of modulation level
have driven the next growth up to present. The next barrier,
sometimes remarked as a fundamental limit of fiber capacity,
has been expected to appear at around 100 Tb/s. While detection
of high-level modulation signal requires high signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR), nonlinearity of optical fibers prevents injection of
high intensity optical signal and enhancement of SNR without
signal degradation. Actual limit may be somewhere over
100 Tb/s (for example, 140 Tb/s [4]), but there is no doubt for
the need of a new and drastic solution for the future networks.
SDM will simply multiply the transmission capacity per fiber
by the number of SDM channels (MCF cores) as long as each
SDM channel acts independently and with equivalent transmis-
sion characteristics to those of conventional single-core fibers.
Thus, using SDM is promising for overcoming the above ca-
pacity crunch.
III. SDM TRANSMISSION DEVICES
A. Ultra-Low-Crosstalk 7-Core MCF
As mentioned in Section I, development of the low-crosstalk
MCF was the enabler of this SDM transmission. We fabricated
659
Fig. 3. Structure of homogeneous 7-core fiber. (a) Facet view and core identi-
fication numbers, (b) trench-assisted refractive index profile.
TABLE II
MEASURED PROPAGATION CHARACTERISTICS OF EACH MCF CORE
a 7-core MCF after elaborate design process [22]. Facet view
of the fabricated fiber is shown in Fig. 3(a). All the cores were
made of pure silica. A marker was additionally embedded to
facilitate the identification of each core. The core pitch was de-
signed to be 45 m. The cladding diameter of the MCF was
designed to be 150 m, so that attenuation degradation of the
outer cores caused by high refractive index of coating does not
exceed 0.001 dB/km. The coating diameter was 256 m.
Two features were introduced to the MCF design for the
crosstalk reduction. One was a trench-assisted refractive index
profile. Each MCF core was designed to be surrounded by a
low-refractive-index layer, as shown in Fig. 3(b), to strengthen
the confinement of the propagating optical field. Trench-assist
structure also contributed to the reduction of the cladding diam-
eter, because it can suppress the coupling from the propagation
mode of the each outer core to leaky modes in the coating.
Another feature was a homogeneous structure, namely, all
MCF cores with an identical design. In contrast to well-known
heterogeneous MCFs [17], homogeneous MCFs are expected
to have low crosstalk when moderate fiber bends are applied
[22].
Table II shows the measured propagation characteristics of
each MCF core at 1550 nm (except for the cutoff wavelength).
Attenuation and were measured to be 0.175–0.181 dB/km
and 78.2–81.3 m , respectively, and almost equivalent to those
of standard single mode fibers (SMFs). Chromatic dispersion,
dispersion slope, and cable cutoff wavelength were measured
to be 22.1–22.2 ps/nm/km, 0.062 ps/nm /km, and 1483–1509
nm, respectively. Fig. 4 shows the crosstalk between each
couple of neighboring cores after 17.4-km propagation for the
bending radius of 140 mm. The values of the crosstalk were
means of statistical distributions of the crosstalk, which were
measured using wavelength-sweeping method with trench-as-
sisted SMF input/output probes [24]. The maximum crosstalk
660 JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 30, NO. 4, FEBRUARY 15, 2012

Fig. 4. MCF crosstalk measured after 17.4-km propagation.

was dB at 1550 nm and dB at 1625 nm. Con-

sequently, the maximum crosstalk level per 1-km fiber length
was dB at1550 nm and dB at 1625 nm.

B. SDM MUX/DEMUX

We devised high-performance SDM MUX and DEMUX

applicable for 7-core MCFs with various structural parame-
ters based on a free-space optical configuration. Our MUX
(DEMUX) consists of a set of SMF collimators equipped with
high precision optical positioning stages, an MCF holder, and
an aggregating lens (focal length mm). The concept
of MUX/DEMUX using an aggregating lens was remarked in
[31], but no report on the actual device was found within the
authors’ knowledge.
The concept is schematically shown in Fig. 5(a). MUX opera-
tion, for example, goes as follows: optical signals to be spatially-
multiplexed are launched from SMF collimators into free-space
as a set of collimated beams. Then the beams are directed to an
aggregating lens (Lens-M) placed in front of the MCF facet. The
beam for center MCF core propagates along the principal axis of Fig. 5. SDM MUX/DEMUX. (a) Schematic drawing, (b) illustration of beam
the aggregating lens, and is collected into the core as in the case propagation, (c) definition of SDM channels in this work, (d) SDM channel loss,
(e) SDM channel crosstalk.
of conventional lens coupling. Meanwhile, the beams for the
outer six MCF cores are incident on the aggregating lens with
angle and position offsets. Each incident beam is collected into
corresponding MCF core if both offsets are properly adjusted. We examined the combined performance of the SDM MUX/
The required position offset is equal to the MCF core pitch ,
DEMUX and 16.8-km-length low-crosstalk MCF with 140-mm
and the required incident angle is given by .
bending radius. Hereafter, “SDM channel” stands for the span
Thus, SDM MUX operation is accomplished. The angle and po-
sition offsets can be varied within specified ranges, in order to from “In” to “Out” of Fig. 5(c). SDM channel numbers reflect
cope with various kinds of MCFs. DEMUX operation is also the core ID numbers. Loss spectrum of each SDM channel was
possible just though the inverse process. measured using amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) of an
Adequate treatment of beam spread is also necessary for prac- erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and an optical spectrum
tical MUX design. Fig. 5(b) shows how beams emitted from analyzer (Fig. 5(d)). Losses were 5.1–5.4 dB for 1550 nm and
MCF cores propagate with deflection and spread. The beam loss difference among SDM channel was less than 0.5 dB for
propagation area is illustrated using an optical simulator with any signal wavelength. 2.9–3.0-dB losses were attributed to the
some parameter assumptions ( m, mm, and MCF propagation and 0.6–0.9-dB losses were due to two angled
initial beam diameters m). The lens-to-MCF distance
physical contact (APC) connections at the input and output of
is chosen so that the distance from the lens to the beam waist
plane is maximized. Then beams are clearly separated at the the SMF collimators plus SMF collimator losses. The remaining
beam waist plane. Analysis based on Gaussian-beam propaga- were the input and output coupling losses of the MCF. Fig. 5(e)
tion theory shows that beam separation ratio, namely, the ratio shows the crosstalk between SDM channels measured using the
between beam-to-beam distance and beam waist diameter, is de- ASE and an optical power meter. The maximum crosstalk was
termined only from and as . less than dB.
SAKAGUCHI et al.: SPACE DIVISION MULTIPLEXED TRANSMISSION OF 109-TB/S DATA SIGNALS USING HOMOGENEOUS SEVEN-CORE FIBER
Fig. 6. SDM transmission setup. DCF: dispersion compensation fiber, VOA, variable optical attenuator, BPF: bandpass filter, PDM: polarization division multi-
plexing, ADC: Analog-to-Digital Convertor, SDM: space division multiplexing, MCF: multi-core fiber.
IV. 109-TB/S SDM TRANSMISSION
A. Experimental Setup
Fig. 6 shows the SDM transmission setup. Two WDM
light sources, each comprises 48 odd-channel light sources
and 49 even-channel light sources, respectively, generate CW
optical carriers (1534.25–1613.52 nm) with 100-GHz spacing
in total. The light source used for the measurement channel
was a narrow-linewidth (about 87 kHz) tunable laser while
the other sources were DFB lasers. The odd and even carriers
were separately modulated in respective parallel dual-drive
Mach–Zehnder modulators to generate 86-Gb/s QPSK sig-
nals [32]. Each modulator was independently driven by two
complementally 43-Gb/s PRBS non-return-to-zero
(NRZ) electrical signals in a push-pull mode. 83-bit delay was
given to the quadrature-phase inputs against in-phase inputs
for signal decorrelation. Polarization directions of the odd and
even WDM carriers were aligned to the axes of polarizers in
the corresponding modulators using polarization controllers.
After modulation, the odd and even WDM signals were com-
bined and split into two paths (X and Y) using a polarization
maintaining 3-dB coupler, and recombined in a polarization
beam splitter (PBS) for PDM. Polarization crosstalk of the
PDM signal was about dB. Time difference of the X- and
Y-polarization signals was adjusted to 11.44 ns (492 symbols)
using a variable delay line. The X-Y skew, which was found to
be part of the error sources in the former experiment [16], was
adjusted to be small. The recombined signals were amplified
by a Tellurite-based C L-band EDFA (NTT electronics CO.
LTD., FA1500QLT) and split into each SDM channel. Signals
through neighboring SDM channels were temporally decorre-
lated by using 2.5-ns (between ch. 2, 4, 6 and ch. 3, 5, 7) and
5-ns (between ch. 1 and ch. 3, 5, 7) fiber delays. Each SDM
channel was coupled to the corresponding core of the MCF
via the SDM MUX. Total signal power measured at each input
port of the SDM MUX was approximately adjusted to
dBm/core using a variable optical attenuator (VOA).
661
Signals after propagation were spatially demultiplexed by
the SDM DEMUX. Each SDM channel after demultiplexing
was selected by an optical switch with no individual tuning of
SDM DEMUX. After propagation and demultiplexing, signals
went through dispersion compensation fibers (DCFs) for partial
compensation of the accumulated chromatic dispersion of the
16.8-km MCF. With this we intended to facilitate the digital
signal processing for dispersion compensation, though we did
not confirm its effectiveness. Fig. 7 shows the measured disper-
sion spectrum for 16.8-km MCF with the compensation fibers.
Residual dispersion was in the range of about to
ps/nm. After passing through the DCFs, 97- WDM signals
were 1R amplified by another Tellurite-based EDFA. Then
a 0.63-nm tunable bandpass filter (BPF) selected the WDM
channel to be measured. Amplification and filtering by addi-
tional EDFA (C- or L-band, depending on the selected WDM
channel) and 1.0-nm BPF were applied to the selected WDM
channel. Finally, a 60-Gbaud optical modulation analyzer
(Agilent Technologies, N4391A) performed coherent detection
of the PDM-QPSK signals. This analyzer had 80-Gsample/s
sampling rate for each of the four electrical outputs (
) from an internal coherent receiver, which was achieved
by interleaving two analog-to-digital convertors (ADCs) per
each channel. ADCs used in the previous experiment [16]
suffered from unintended noises which presumably resulted
from some problem in the interleaving, but such noisy ADCs
were removed and replaced by new ADCs in this experiment.
Residual chromatic dispersion was digitally compensated.
PDM was demultiplexed by a dual polarization Stokes align
algorithm [33]. 45-tap adaptive equalization filter was used to
mitigate signal distortions due to shortcomings of the trans-
mitters’ and receivers’ bandwidths. BER was counted through
bit-by-bit comparison of received and reference signals. De-
coding process does not make any assumption on the input data
pattern and can be applied to more practical data than PRBS if
needed.
662
Fig. 7. Compensation of chromatic dispersion using SMF and DCF.
Fig. 8. Measured BER versus OSNR for 172-Gb/s PDM-QPSK signals.
B. Results
In advance to the SDM-WDM experiment, we investigated
the relation of BER and optical SNR (OSNR) using a single-
wavelength-channel ( nm) 172-Gb/s PDM-QPSK
signals, to see whether the SDM channels with dB crosstalk
cause any effect on the transmission results or not. Fig. 8 shows
the results for back-to-back, single-SDM-channel transmission,
and 7-SDM transmission cases. Total nine series of the results
show almost the same characteristics with each other, showing
that the SDM crosstalk caused no significant SNR penalty on the
transmission. There seemed to be an error floor at BER . Fig. 10 shows an example of signal equalization. Constel-
The reason is not clear, but probably it is attributable to the
modulation analyzer because our transmitters have an ability of
error-free 86-Gb/s DQPSK transmission when used with a de-
layed interferometer and direct-detection receiver.
Fig. 9(a) shows the measured optical spectrum of the
WDM-PDM-QPSK signals before transmission, and Fig. 9(b)
shows the spectrum after transmission through SDM ch. 1 and
1R amplification. Almost all the gain bandwidth of the Tellurite
EDFA was used. Magnified views in the figure clearly show
the good separation of neighboring WDM signals. Fig. 9(c)
shows the OSNRs of each WDM channel before and after
transmission (and 1R). The final OSNR was in the range of
21.3–25.0 dB, which corresponds to a BER range of about
– according to the result in Fig. 8. (OSNR
values in the present paper is defined by the ratio of signal
power in 100-GHz bandwidth per noise power in 0.1-nm
bandwidth, while OSNR values in [16] were defined by the
ratio of signal power in 0.1-nm bandwidth per noise power in
0.1-nm bandwidth. The definition difference induced about 3.8
dB differences in values. In addition, values in [16] included
about 1.2-dB offset which originated from the optical spectrum
JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 30, NO. 4, FEBRUARY 15, 2012
Fig. 9. Optical spectra and OSNR. (a) Spectrum before transmission, dashed
line is a spectrum measured with neighboring channels off. (b) spectrum after
transmission and 1R, (c) OSNR.
analyzer used. When compared at nm, almost no
physical difference existed between present result and the
result in [16]. Relatively high OSNR values of [16] in shorter
wavelength regime were presumably affected by a long term
drift of the system from when we measured the signal till when
we measured the noise. In the present measurement, signals
and noises were measured in the same occasion.)
lation diagrams in Fig. 10(a) were obtained from 172-Gb/s
PDM-QPSK signal detection without equalization. The 45-tap
adaptive equalization filter had a typical frequency response as
shown in Fig. 10(b), and reduced distortion of the detected sig-
nals as in Fig. 10(c). Demodulated I-Q waveforms in Fig. 10(d)
show clear eye openings. Averaged BER for both polarization
division and I-Q channels was automatically calculated by the
modulation analyzer.
Fig. 11 shows the measured BERs for each 172-Gb/s
PDM-QPSK tributaries of 7 core SDM 97 WDM signals.
300 000-symbol data per channel were sampled and used for
the error-rate calculation of even WDM channels. For odd
WDM channels, we had to reduce the sample amounts to
200 000 symbols per channel because of measurement time
limitation. We consider that 200 000-symbol samples were
still large enough for obtaining statistically-significant results.
Most measured BERs were within the expected range except
for some short-wavelength channels. Some fluctuations among
WDM channels may be partly due to bias drifts of the parallel
dual-drive Mach–Zehnder modulators and partly due to EDFA
characteristics. BERs for all the tributaries were well below the
SAKAGUCHI et al.: SPACE DIVISION MULTIPLEXED TRANSMISSION OF 109-TB/S DATA SIGNALS USING HOMOGENEOUS SEVEN-CORE FIBER
Fig. 10. Example of signal equalization by optical modulation analyzer
for 1565.50-nm WDM channel (SDM ). (a) Constellation
diagrams before equalization. (b) Frequency response of the equalization
filter. (c) Equalized constellation diagrams. (d) Demodulated I-Q and X-Y
polarization waveforms.
Fig. 11. Measured BERs for 7-core SDM channels and 97 WDM channels.
threshold of commercially available FEC modules.
Thus, the aggregated data rate was 109 Tb/s, assuming 7% FEC
overhead. The average BER for each SDM channel was within
the range of – , and the BER averaged over all
SDM-WDM channels was . This total BER was
32% smaller than the results in [16]. This improvement was
due presumably to the reduction of the polarization skew and
ADC noise.
Because each core of the MCF has equivalent propagation
characteristics to those of conventional fibers, and because
100-Tb/s transmission using conventional fibers was demon-
strated to be barely possible, total 700-Tb/s SDM transmission
is expected to be possible in principle. This 700 Tb/s will be
the next barrier from now, and farther increase of the transmis-
sion capacity will require increased number of SDM channels
663
by means of coupled multi-core fibers and additional mode
division multiplexing [34].
V. FUTURE SDM DEVICES
Present experiment was successful as an initial demonstration
of large-scale SDM transmission. For use in practical networks,
however, our prototype SDM MUX/DEMUX needs more im-
provement. The largest problem of our MUX/DEMUX is their
spatial volume. The SDM MUX and DEMUX we used in the
present experiment had a size of 600 500 430 mm for each,
which is apparently not suitable for deployment in commercial
systems. Reason of this large size was that we equipped our pro-
totypes with alignment mechanics to adapt themselves to var-
ious kinds of MCFs. Once the MCF structure is standardized
and precise MCF fabrication technology is established, such
mechanics should become unnecessary.
For use in such situation, we suggest SDM MUX/DEMUXs
consisting of two-dimensional (2-D) micro-assembled fiber
collimator arrays similar to what already used in 3-D MEMS
switches etc. [35], and optimally-designed aggregation lenses.
Precisely-aligned collimator arrays and MCF cores will be
fixed together in a factory after optimally coupled. Size of
MUX/DEMUXs will become at most comparable to that of
the MEMS switches. Insertion loss, which is another important
property of the devices, will be dominated by fabrication
precision of the collimator arrays and MCFs. We will need to
spent considerable efforts to improve the precisions, but we
still have a chance to reduce losses of MUX/DEMUX from
present values by simultaneously optimizing lens parameters.
Tapered multi-core connectors (TMC) [10], [15] may also
have potential for future practical use, though they have rela-
tively large insertion loss and large loss variance among SDM
channels at present (max 2 dB for MUX/DEMUX pairs). They
already achieved small volume and acceptable crosstalk of less
than dB for each input and output. In any case, ease and
precise fabrication should be a common challenge of all the can-
didate devices.
VI. CONCLUSION
We achieved a record 109-Tb/s transmission using 7-core
SDM, 97-WDM-PDM-QPSK (2 86 Gb/s) signals over
16.8 km using a low-crosstalk 7-core MCF and high-perfor-
mance SDM MUX/DEMUX. The transmission capacity limit
( Tb/s) of optical fibers due to nonlinearity was overcome
by SDM. The crosstalk level of the MCF was dB per
1-km fiber length and crosstalk of the combined SDM channels
was at most dB. This low crosstalk caused almost no
SNR penalty in the SDM transmission. BER was measured for
all SDM-WDM channels to be less than the commercial FEC
threshold. SDM technology will be the driving force to increase
the transmission capacity up to 700 Tb/s.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Y. Kato and I. Kawakami
of Agilent Technologies for the use and technical support of
their latest optical modulation analyzer. The authors would
also like to thank T. Makino, H. Sumimoto, T. Hashimoto, and
M. Kurihara for their technical contributions.
664
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Jun Sakaguchi (M’10) received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in physics
from the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in 1998, 2000, and 2003, respec-
tively, and the Ph.D. degree in electronics engineering from the University of
Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan, in 2008.
He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow with Nara Institute of Science and Technology
(NAIST), Ikoma, Japan from 2008 to 2010. He is presently a Post-Doctoral
Fellow with the National Institute of Information and Communications Tech-
nology (NICT).
Dr. Sakaguchi is a member of the Japan Society of Applied Physics and the
IEEE Photonics Society.
Yoshinari Awaji, biography not available at time of publication.
Naoya Wada (M’97) received the B.E., M.E., and Dr. Eng. degrees in elec-
tronics from Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, in 1991, 1993, and 1996,
respectively.
In 1996, he joined the Communications Research Laboratory (CRL), Ministry
of Posts and Telecommunications, Tokyo, Japan. He has been project reader of
Photonic Node Project and research manager of NICT from 2006. He has been
group reader of the Photonic Network Group from April 2009. Since April 2011,
he has been director of the Photonic Network System Laboratory in NICT. His
current research interests are in the area of photonic networks and optical com-
munication technologies, such as optical switching network, energy-efficient
network, optical access system, optical processing system, burst-mode optical
communication technologies, optical packet and optical circuit integrated net-
work, and huge capacity transmission based on spatial division multiplexing.
He has published more than 100 papers in refereed English journals and more
than 300 papers in refereed international conferences.
Dr. Wada is a member of the IEEE Communications Society, the IEEE Pho-
tonics Society, the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication En-
gineers (IEICE), the Japan Society of Applied Physics (JSAP), and the Optical
Society of Japan (OSJ). He has received the 1999 Young Engineer Award from
the IEICE and the 2005 Young Researcher Award from the Ministry of Edu-
cation, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan. He currently serves as
technical program committee of many international conferences such as OFC,
ECOC, OECC, ACP, and so on.
SAKAGUCHI et al.: SPACE DIVISION MULTIPLEXED TRANSMISSION OF 109-TB/S DATA SIGNALS USING HOMOGENEOUS SEVEN-CORE FIBER
Atsushi Kanno received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in science from the
University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan, in 1999, 2001, and 2005, respectively.
In 2005, he was with the Venture Business Laboratory of the Institute of Sci-
ence and Engineering, University of Tsukuba, where he was engaged in research
on electron spin dynamics in semiconductor quantum dot structures using the
optical-polarization-sensitive Kerr effect measurement technique. In 2006, he
joined the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
Japan. From 2006 to 2007, he was also the member of the CREST-JST project
“Creation of Novel Functional Devices Using Nanoscale Spatial Structures of
the Radiation Field.” He is working on ultrafast optical communication systems,
lithium niobate optical modulators, microwave/millimeter-wave photonics, and
the study of ultrafast phenomena in semiconductor optical devices.
Dr. Kanno is a member of the Japan Society of Applied Physics (JSAP)
and the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineering
(IEICE) of Japan.
Tetsuya Kawanishi (M’06–SM’06) received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees
in electronics from Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, in 1992, 1994, and 1997,
respectively.
From 1994 to 1995, he was with the Production Engineering Laboratory, Mat-
sushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic) Company, Ltd. During 1997, he was with
the Venture Business Laboratory, Kyoto University, where he was engaged in
research on electromagnetic scattering and near-field optics. In 1998, he joined
the Communications Research Laboratory, Ministry of Posts and Telecommu-
nications (now the National Institute of Information and Communications Tech-
nology), Tokyo, Japan. During 2004, he was a Visiting Scholar with the Depart-
ment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California at San
Diego. His current research interests include high-speed optical modulators and
on RF photonics.
665
Tetsuya Hayashi (M’10) was born in Tochigi, Japan, in 1981. He received the
B.E. and M.E. degrees in electronic engineering from the University of Tokyo,
Tokyo, Japan, in 2004 and 2006, respectively.
In 2006, he joined Optical Communications R&D Laboratories, Sumitomo
Electric Industries, Ltd., Yokohama, Japan. He has been engaged in researches
on fiber optic sensing, and on design and evaluation of optical fibers.
Mr. Hayashi is a member of the Institute of Electronics, Information and
Communication Engineers (IEICE) of Japan.
Toshiki Taru received the M.E. degrees in metallurgical engineering from the
University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in 1997.
In 1997, he joined Optical Communications R&D Laboratories, Sumitomo
Electric Industries, Yokohama, Japan. He has been working on research and
development of optical fibers.
Tetsuya Kobayashi joined Sumitomo Osaka Cement Co., Ltd. in 1990, where
he was engaged in designing and developing optical devices. In 2001, he joined
OPTOQUEST Co., Ltd., where he has been engaged in designing and devel-
oping optical devices for mass production and subsystem prototypes using spa-
tial lens optics.
Mr. Kobayashi is a member of the Institute of Electronics, Information and
Communication Engineers (IEICE).
Masayuki Watanabe joined Oyokoden Laboratories Co., Ltd. in 1988, where
he was engaged in developing optical devices. In 2001, he joined OPTOQUEST
Co., Ltd., where he has been engaged in designing and developing optical eval-
uation equipments and custom made optical coupling subsystems using spatial
lens optics.
Mr. Watanabe is a member of the Institute of Electronics, Information and
Communication Engineers (IEICE).