Diversity-multiplexing tradeoff in mode-division multiplexing.

The capacity of mode-division multiplexing (MDM) systems is limited, for a given outage probability, by mode-dependent loss (MDL) and gain. Modal degrees of freedom may be exploited to increase transmission rate (multiplexing gain) or lower outage probability (diversity gain), but there is a fundamental tradeoff between the achievable multiplexing and diversity gains. In this Letter, we present the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff in MDM systems for the first time, studying the impact of signal-to-noise ratio, MDL, and frequency diversity order on the tradeoff in the strong-mode-coupling regime.