Radio over fiber architectures for optical/wireless integration

Abstract

Optical fiber based communication has revolutionized the world of wired communication by providing low-attenuation, high-bandwidth communication channels. The field of Radio Over Fiber (ROF)aims at integrating the world of wireless and optical communication to achieve the common aim of faster and more reliable communication for the end user. It involves transmitting RF signals to and from a BS, which carries out centralised signal processing. These RF signals arrive from and are transmitted to a number of remote antennas, where little or no signal processing is done. The ROF technique employs the high-bandwidth, low-attenuation optical fibers for transmitting signals between the BS and the remote antennas. This technique helps in improving the coverage, cellular capacity, data rates and power efficiency.

This treatise takes the reader from the basics to the state-of-the art techniques in a step-by-step manner. In Chapter 2, the basics of the classical Analog ROF (AROF) link are introduced along with its simulation-based analysis. The discussion of the AROF basics also provides an introduction to the various optical components that are employed both in the basic AROF link of Chapter 2 as well as in the more advanced links discussed in the subsequent chapters. After discussing the basic AROF links found in the current literature, Chapter 2 presents and mathematically characterizes a novel AROF architecture along with a discussion of the results obtained through its simulation. Then, we introduce the concepts behind designing advanced ROF links in Chapter 3. We commence with an extensive study of diverse ROF links that were designed using each of the three approaches discussed in Section 1.5, namely the ROF links employing a) performance improvement techniques, b) cost reduction techniques and c) optical RF-generation techniques. In the rest of the thesis, we present novel architectures that were designed employing these three approaches. In Chapter 4, we present three novel architectures that employed both cost-reduction as well as optical RF-generation techniques, while Chapter 5 focuses on the benefits of the performance-improvement technique of Digitized ROF (DROF). A simulation based study of the DROF technique and a novel DROF-based architecture are presented in Chapter 5. The DROF technique improves the attainable performance at the cost of an increased link cost. We conclude in Chapter 6 and propose a range of future research ideas. Amongst others, we propose the employment of Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) in a ROF link as a potential direction of future research. Explicitly, as a first step in this direction, we propose to combine the employment of the cost-saving state-of-the-art Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) with the employment of the improved-performance DROF technique in a single ROF link in order to strike an appealing cost-performance tradeoff. Hence, in Chapter 6, we first discuss the basics of POF-based optical communication and then present the novel proposal of a DROF-based ROF link that employs POF. Additionally, we present our conclusions in Chapter 6, where we provide design guidelines for ROF links and also discuss avenues for future research.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Lajos Hanzo: orcid.org/0000-0002-2636-5214

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