320-Gbit/s (32 Chs x 10 Gbit/s) WDM transmission over 1.7 km of a bending-insensitive holey fiber with a small bending diameter

We experimentally investigated a 320-Gbit/s (32 Chs x 10 Gbit/s) wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) transmission over 1.7 km of a bending-insensitive holey fiber with 10 turns of 5 mm in bending diameter. The holey fiber with a germanium-doped core and with one layer of air holes in the silica cladding region was fabricated by using the thermal expanding technique. The fabricated holey fiber had a low bending loss of less than 0.04 dB for a bending diameter of 5 mm. The 320-Gbit/s optical source consisted of 32 WDM channels with 100-GHz channel spacing in the C-band. After transmission over 1.7 km of the proposed bending-insensitive holey fiber, error free operation of all 32 channels at a bit error rate of 10(-9) was achieved.