Optical Fiber Telecommunications VIB: Chapter 20. Recent Advances in High-Frequency (>10GHz) Microwave Photonic Links (Optics and Photonics)

The transmission of multi-band radio signals through optical fibers has drawn great attention recently for its potential in cellular backhaul networks, mobile cloud computing, and wireless local-area networks. As wireless services and technologies evolve to multi-gigabit radio access networks, their speed is increased but the wireless coverage of a single access point is inevitably reduced dramatically. As a result, the importance of >10GHz radio-over-fiber techniques has been emphasized for the capability of expanding wireless coverage feasibility, and in the meantime reducing system complexity and operation expenditure, especially in the high-speed millimeter-wave regime. In this chapter, we introduce the radio-over-fiber technique and its challenge of handling optical millimeter-wave generation, transmission, and converged multi-band system. By exploring real-world, system implementation and characterization, the unique features and versatile applications of radio-over-fiber technologies are investigated and reviewed to reach next-generation converged optical and wireless access networks.