Energy-Efficient Hollow-Core Fibre Transmission

Abstract

Hollow-core fibres (HCFs) are a promising means of increasing the throughput of coherent transmission systems. In addition to their advantages in terms of low latency, nonlinearity and attenuation, HCFs can potentially improve the energy efficiency of coherent transmission systems by reducing the number of repeaters and enabling more efficient modulation formats than SMF links. However, the relationship between the link parameters (e.g. launch power, amplifier efficiency and transceiver noise) and the energy efficiency has not been explored. In this work, we investigate energy-efficient operating regimes in HCF transmission systems. We show that the optimum energy per bit in SMF systems is ultimately throughput-limited - maximising throughput will minimise energy per bit. In contrast, the transceiver-limited throughput of HCF leads to two separate launch power optima - minimum-energy-per-bit and maximum-throughput. We derive a closed-form equation for the minimum-energy-per-bit launch power for HCF links in terms of the link parameters, including the amplifier efficiency, transceiver power consumption and link gain. We use our model to explore the impact of span length and fibre attenuation in both operating regimes, showing how energy per bit considerations significantly impact the optimum span length. Optimising for energy efficiency can lead to 50% reduction in link energy per bit for only a 3% throughput penalty at 3000 km, whilst also reducing the required amplifier launch power from >33 dBm to <23 dBm. This work highlights the importance of including physical layer energy considerations in HCF link design.