Optical and millimeter-wave radio seamless MIMO transmission based on a radio over fiber technology

Multi-input multi-output (MIMO) transmission of two millimeter-wave radio signals seamlessly converted from polarization-division-multiplexed quadrature-phase-shift-keying optical signals is successfully demonstrated, where a radio access unit basically consisting of only optical-to-electrical converters and a radio receiver performs total signal equalization of both the optical and the radio paths and demodulation with digital signal processing (DSP). Orthogonally polarized optical components that are directly converted to two-channel radio components can be demultiplexed and demodulated with high-speed DSP as in optical digital coherent detection. 20-Gbaud optical and radio seamless MIMO transmission provides a total capacity of 74.4 Gb/s with a forward error correction overhead of 7%.