Patent ID: 8687932

Claim:
A trench-assisted optical fiber, optimized for figure-of-merit (FOM) performance, comprising a core region having a longitudinal axis, a shelf region surrounding said core region, a cladding region surrounding said shelf region, said core and shelf and cladding regions configured to support and guide the propagation of signal light in a fundamental transverse mode in said core and shelf regions in the direction of said axis, the cladding region including an inner trench and an outer trench, wherein the optical fiber further comprises: a core effective area (Aeff) of between 135 Î¼m 2 and about 170 Î¼m 2 ; an effective relative refractive index difference of greater than about 0.08%; a loss at 1550 nm of less than 0.185 dB/km; and a refractive index profile having a figure of merit (FOM) frontier distance less than about 0.5 dB, wherein the FOM frontier distance is defined as=(A 0 +A 1 Â· core delta 0.5 +A 3 Â· shelf width+A 4 Â· trench delta+A 5 Â· trench volume+A 6 Â· outer trench width+A 7 Â· outer trench delta+A 8 Â· trench deltaÂ· trench width+A 9 Â· trench deltaÂ· outer trench width+A 10 Â· trench deltaÂ· outer trench delta) 2 , wherein: A 0 is approximately âˆ’0.9; A 1 is approximately 35; A 3 is approximately 0.035; A 4 is approximately 270; A 5 is approximately âˆ’0.02; A 6 is approximately 0.007; A 7 is approximately âˆ’150; A 8 is approximately 50; A 9 is approximately âˆ’15; and A 10 is approximately 8500.