Demonstration of a 280 Gbit/s free-space space-division-multiplexing communications link utilizing plane-wave spatial multiplexing.

We demonstrate a 280 Gbit/s free-space space-division-multiplexing communications link incorporating a set of independent tilted truncated plane-waves, each generated by a single mode fiber placed at the back-focal plane of a spherical lens. Each of the seven tilted plane-wave channels are encoded with a 40 Gbit/s 16-QAM signal. Our approach comprises two identical linear fiber-arrays placed approximately 5 m apart. As each fiber array is placed at the back-focal-plane of a spherical lens, each fiber array is effectively placed in a conjugate image plane of the other. A channel crosstalk of less than 26 dB is shown, with a bit-error-rate below the FEC threshold of 3.8×10(-3).