Impact of modal dispersion on the performance of an SDM optical network

Space-division multiplexing (SDM) is under investigation to support the growing capacity demand. Contrary to single-mode fibers, multi-core and multi-mode fibers supporting SDM experience a much higher modal dispersion (MD) that undermines the assumptions of quality of transmission (QoT) models usually unaware of it. In this paper, we investigate the impact of modal dispersion on SDM networks through an MD-aware Gaussian noise (GN) model. Network analysis shows that modal dispersion increases the throughput considering: i) Shannon limit, ii) different modulation formats