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The combination of multimode fibre and vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) has always been a broadly competitive, cost-effective short-range networking solution.

The increasing transmission rate in data centers has set a higher demand on the performance of multimode fibres which developed towards high bandwidth, bending resistance, and multiple wavelengths. The combination of multimode fibres and VCSELs is still the most cost-effective solution for high-speed interconnection within short ranges. In the future, the combination of parallel optics technology and SWDM technology is the major application scheme of multimode fibres.

The soaring growth of network data traffic has driven continual upgrading of multimode fibre standards and applications in recent years. Ethernet data rates have increased from 10GbE/40GbE/100GbE (Gigabit Ethernet) to 25GbE/50GbE/200GbE/400GbE, and will be further upgraded to 800GbE/1.6TbE in future.

OM2 optical fibre is a traditional 50/125 graded refractive index multi-mode fibre. Traditional OM2 optical fibre standards and designs use LEDs (see Figure 1) in low bandwidth scenarios, transmitting data at rates of 100 Mbit/s or lower.

Communication fibres can be categorized as single-mode or multimode, depending on the number of transmission modes they possess at the operating wavelength. Due to its large core diameter, multimode fibre can be used with low-cost light sources, making it widely used for short-range transmission scenarios, such as data centers and local area networks (LAN). The rapid development of data centers over recent years, together with multimode fibre's popularity in data center and LAN applications, has led to its widespread popularity. This article outlines the development of multimode fibre.