Longitudinal Power Decay of a Weakly-Coupled Multi-Core Fiber

Longitudinal power decay because of the inter-core crosstalk of a weakly-coupled multi-core fiber is numerically simulated by solving coupled power equation and measured using bi-directional optical time domain reflectometer technique. The power decay caused by the inter-core crosstalk is observed on the measured optical time domain reflectometer data. The simulated power decay shows good agreement with the measured power decay. The power decay of the outer core excitation is gentler than that of the center core excitation. The center core and outer cores of multi-core fibers with a hexagonal close-packed structure show the different crosstalk characteristics until the power of all cores is saturated.