Towards an optical MIMO system performance improvement using MGDM multiplexing and EDFA optical amplification

•A spatial multiplexing technique MGDM is investigated for transmission link covering a distance of 1200 m.•Combining of EDFA optical amplifiers is investigated.•A new architecture of the MGDM-MIMO optical transmission chain is proposed.•Improved transmitted signal quality is presented.•The investigation demonstrates excellent transmission performance, attaining a remarkable data rate of 4.5 Gb/s over a considerable distance of 1200 km. This paper proposes a creative (3 × 3) MIMO transmission system employing multimode fibers MMF and MGDM spatial multiplexing technology. Based on spatial injection and spatial detection of light beams, the MGDM approach allows the MMF fiber to benefit from its entire bandwidth and increase its transmission capacity. To increase the quality and transmission capacity, the injection and detection parameters have been optimized. The transmission and reception conditions on the optical fiber are adjusted to ensure the transfer of high-speed services. Thus, ideal injection and detection conditions increase the quality of signals received on an MMF fiber. The proposed transmission chain decreases the modal and chromatic dispersions during transmission, for this reason, three subsystems interconnected by spatial connectors are created. To decrease interference between the modes of the same groups and to correct for attenuation of the signal on a 1200 m cable, two EDFA optical amplifiers were integrated. The simulation of the proposed chain (3 × 3) MIMO of distance 1.2 Km is realized to transmit data with a total rate of about 4.5 Gb/s (1.5 Gb/s for each user). Then, the comparison between the BER and quality factor Q performance was done for a system with and without optical amplifier.