Fibercore developed multicore fibers many years ago, predominantly for the telecoms industry. The telecoms industry had a view that if you could have a standard optical fiber of the telecoms style - 245 micron coating, 125 micron glass diameter , but with more cores, you can increase the bandwidth of your signal transmission, speed up the internet, speed up video communication, speed up audio presentation etc. Such fibers have subsequently also found uses in 3D shape sensing and biological and chemical sensing techniques. Fig. 1, below (you will need to log-in), demonstrates how different cores can be addressed using different wavelengths in each core or addressing all 7 cores simultaneously. So that opens up a wide range of applications. Having different fluorescent markers that you want to trigger at different times, but having only a single fiber input at the end of your system, is the type of application that can benefit from the use of a multicore fiber.
