Selective Deployment of Bidirectional Hollow-Core Fibers in Hybrid SMF/HCF Optical Networks

We investigate selectively deploying bidirectional transmission in hybrid Hollow-Core Fiber (HCF) networks. Upgrading 50% of links to bidirectional HCF yields at least a 40% throughput increase compared to unidirectional SMF and captures 85% of the power consumption reduction of a full unidirectional HCF network upgrade.