Simple and reconfigured single-sideband OFDM RoF system

Area of Science:

• Optical Communications
• Signal Processing
• Wireless Networks

Background:

• Radio over Fiber (RoF) systems are crucial for high-speed data transmission.
• Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) offers robust data transmission but faces challenges with dispersion.
• Software-Defined Radio Access Networks (RANs) require flexible and reconfigurable communication systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel, dispersion-tolerant single sideband (SSB) OFDM RoF system.
• To enable flexible radio frequency (RF) generation and adjustment using digital signal processing (DSP).
• To demonstrate the system's capability for high-speed data transmission in future RANs.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of a reconfigurable SSB-OFDM RoF system utilizing DSP.
• Employment of a single in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) modulator and direct detection.
• Generation of RF signals with adjustable frequencies based on DSP.

Main Results:

• Experimental demonstration of 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM) signal generation.
• Successful transmission of 21.87-Gb/s, 21-GHz and 38-GHz SSB-OFDM RoF signals.
• Transmission achieved over 80-km of single-mode fiber (SMF) with dispersion tolerance.

Conclusions:

• The proposed DSP-enabled SSB-OFDM RoF system is simple and reconfigurable.
• The system effectively overcomes dispersion challenges in RoF links.
• It offers a viable solution for flexible RF generation in future software-defined RANs.