Graded-index plastic optical fiber for ultra-low bit error rate in high-speed multilevel PAM transmission

We develop a novel graded-index plastic optical fiber (GI POF) that achieves ultra-low bit error rate of less than 10^-15 for four-level pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM4) at 53 Gb/s without error correction techniques in short-reach multimode fiber (MMF) links. The stability of data transmission is attributed to significant noise reduction in MMF links through strong mode coupling closely related to the microscopic heterogeneities in the novel GI POF core material. The novel GI POF can eliminate the need for error correction techniques in high-speed multilevel PAM transmission systems to reduce communication delay and power consumption, paving the way for optical interconnects in real time at a high speed and with low power consumption for data centers and UHD transmission systems.