학술논문

Broadband Optical Heterodyne Millimeter-Wave-over-Fiber Wireless Links Based on a Quantum Dash Dual-Wavelength DFB Laser
Document Type
Periodical
Source
Journal of Lightwave Technology J. Lightwave Technol. Lightwave Technology, Journal of. 40(12):3698-3708 Jun, 2022
Subject
Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Photonics and Electrooptics
Optical mixing
Optical fibers
High-speed optical techniques
Optical feedback
Wireless communication
Optical transmitters
Broadband communication
5G
broadband wireless communications
fronthaul
microwave photonics
millimeter-wave
optical heterodyning
quantum dash dual-wavelength DFB laser
radio-over-fiber
Language
ISSN
0733-8724
1558-2213
Abstract
We demonstrate real-time broadband multi-Gb/s electrical RF synthesizer-free millimeter-wave (MMW) signals generation and wireless transmission at the 5G new radio (NR) frequency band of 47 GHz based on analog radio-over-fiber (A-RoF) fronthaul. This is enabled by a low noise, highly correlated, monolithic C-band semiconductor InAs/InP quantum-dash (QDash) dual-wavelength distributed feedback (DW-DFB) laser. One laser mode is encoded using 4-/6-GBaud multilevel quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) (16-/32-/64-QAM) baseband data signals, the other lasing mode is used as an optical local oscillator for optical-heterodyne remote up-conversion to a MMW carrier of 47.27 GHz. Consequently, optical baseband modulated data signals with data capacity up to 36 Gb/s (6-GBaud × 64-QAM) are transmitted through back-to-back (BtB) and 25-/50-km of standard single mode fiber (SSMF) before the MMW carrier is optically synthesized remotely for free space wireless data transmission and detection over up to 9-m. The end-to-end MMW-over-fiber (MMWoF) wireless link is thoroughly characterized exhibiting promising error-vector-magnitude (EVM) and bit-error-rate (BER) values. The 4-/6-GBaud 16-QAM MMWoF wireless links achieve EVMs down to 6.32%/7.33%, 6.71%/7.78%, and 7.35%/8.91% through BtB, 25-km, and 50-km SSMF, respectively. Similarly, the EVM for 32-QAM and 64-QAM links is observed to be 5.56%/6.56% and 6.05%/6.62%, respectively. Moreover, in each case, the calculated BER is below the forward error correction (FEC) limit of 3.8 × 10 −3 . The results corroborate the potential and viability of the QDash DW-DFB laser as a simple, efficient and cost-effective alternative to individual laser sources for deployment in broadband photonic MMWoF fronthaul systems of 5G wireless networks.