This paper summarizes basic system design for an optical fiber feeder for microcellular mobile communication systems. The optical feeder enables compact and low cost base stations, easy radio channel control and flexible mobile communication systems. Basic transmission characteristics are investigated through optical transmission experiments. By using these results, feeder performance is estimated and optimal system parameters are designed.

This paper reports performance improvement in an optical fiber feeder for microcellular mobile radio systems. A low noise optical receiver using a transformer resonant circuit is described. With this receiver, CNR degradation due to receiver noise is suppressed to less than 0.9dB. Furthermore, two novel techniques, the use of a multiple-LD transmitter and automatic LD input level control, are proposed. The multiple-LD transmitter increases transmitter output power and reduces the transmitter noise. With a dual-LD transmitter, it is possible to increase the optical loss margin by 3.1dB, which corresponds to transmission length expansion of 6.2km, or to improve the received CNR by 2.8dB, which enables communication range expansion. Automatic LD input level control, which optimizes LD input level according to the received radio power, can expand the actual dynamic range of the up link.