We propose a radio-over-fiber (RoF) system with 1-bit outphasing modulation. The proposed RoF system does not require a power-hungry digital-to-analog converter in access points and relaxes the operation speed of optical transceivers to reduce device cost. We introduce two configurations to enable 1-bit outphasing modulation in our system; mixed-signal and all-digital configurations. In the mixed-signal configuration, the effects of harmonics and phase/amplitude mismatch on the adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) were analyzed through simulation, and wideband transmission with a signal bandwidth of 400 MHz was experimentally verified, complying with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard for millimeter-wave band. Moreover, wide-band transmission with a signal bandwidth of 1 GHz was also experimentally verified for beyond-5G and 6G. The all-digital configuration can be implemented in a standard digital design flow. This configuration was also verified to comply with the 3GPP standard by properly selecting the intermediate and sampling frequencies to mitigate the effects of folded harmonics and quantization noise. Finally, the proposed RoF system with both configurations has been shown to have a higher bandwidth efficiency compared with other systems complying with the 3GPP standard for the ACLR. Therefore, the proposed RoF system provides a cost-effective in-building wireless solution for 5G and 6G mobile network systems.

In order to further reduce the transmission rate of multi-channel satellite broadcast signals, whose carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR fluctuates due to rainfall attenuation, we propose a novel digitized radio-over-fiber (DRoF) -based optical re-transmission system based on adaptive combination compression for ultra-high definition (UHD) broadcasting satellite (BS)/communications satellite (CS) broadcast signals. The proposed system reduces the optical re-transmission rate of BS/CS signals as much as possible while handling input CNR fluctuations. Therefore, the transmission rate of communication signals in time-division multiplexing (TDM) transmission is ensured, and network sharing of communication signals and broadcast signals via passive optical network (PON) is realized. Based on the ITU-R P.618-13 prediction model, an experimental evaluation is performed using estimates of the long-term statistics of attenuation due to rainfall. The attenuation is evaluated as a percentage of the time that long-term re-transmission service is available. It is shown that the proposed system is able to accommodate a wide range of rainfall attenuation and achieve a 99.988% time percentage for the duration of service provision. In order to show the rate reduction effect of the proposed system, the quantization bit reduction effect as a function of the input CNR, which depends on rainfall attenuation, is experimentally confirmed. Experiments show that service operation time of 99.978% can be achieved by 3-bit transmission. This means a 62.5% reduction in transmission rate is realized compared to conventional fixed quantization. Furthermore, the average quantization bit number in our system for service operation times is 3.000, indicating that most service operation times are covered by just 3-bit transmission.

This paper studies the performance of the quantitative RF power variation in Radio-over-Fiber beam forming system utilizing a phased array-antenna integrating photo-diodes in downlink network for next generation millimeter wave band radio access. Firstly, we described details of fabrication of an integrated photonic array-antenna (IPA), where a 60GHz patch antenna 4×2 array and high-speed photo-diodes were integrated into a substrate. We evaluated RF transmission efficiency as an IPA system for Radio-over-Fiber (RoF)-based mobile front hall architecture with remote antenna beam forming capability. We clarified the characteristics of discrete and integrated devices such as an intensity modulator (IM), an optical fiber and the IPA and calculated RF power radiated from the IPA taking account of the measured data of the devices. Based on the experimental results on RF tone signal transmission by utilizing the IPA, attainable transmission distance of wireless communication by improvement and optimization of the used devices was discussed. We deduced that the antenna could output sufficient power when we consider that the cell size of the future mobile communication systems would be around 100 meters or smaller.

This paper presents a novel 60 GHz-band photonic-integrated array-antenna and module for radio-over-fiber (RoF)-based beam forming. An integrated photonic array-antennas (IPA), where eight photodiodes and 4×2 arrayed patch-antenna are integrated in a single board, is actually fabricated, and 3.5-Gbit/s QPSK digital signal transmission with beam forming of the IPA is experimentally demonstrated. In addition, a novel 60-GHz compact antenna module is proposed and fabricated for increasing the number of antenna elements and flexibility creating various beam patterns. The feasibility of beam forming operation for the proposed antenna module is confirmed by a 60-GHz RoF transmission experiment. The capability of detecting the mobile terminal direction, which is one of the indispensable functions for actual environment, is also studied. The obtained results in this paper will be useful for designing future radio access networks based on RoF transmission technology.

We report the adaptability of the burst-mode erbium-doped fiber amplifier (BM-EDFA) for uplink transmission of sharply rising analog radio-over-fiber (RoF) signals by using long-term evolution (LTE) -Advanced format on a mobile front-haul. Recent drastically increased mobile data traffic is boosting the demand for high-speed radio communication technologies for next-generation mobile services to enhance user experience. However, the latency become increasingly visible as serious issues. Analog RoF technology is a promising candidate for a next generation mobile front-haul to realize low latency. For the uplink, an RoF signal may rise sharply in response to a burst of in-coming radio signals. We propose that a newly developed BM-EDFA is applied for such a sharply rising RoF signal transmission. The BM-EDFA that we designed using enhanced intrinsic saturation power EDF to suppress the gain transient caused by received optical power fluctuations with optical feedback. The new BM-EDFA was designed for a wider linear output power range and lower NF than the previous BM-EDFA. The observed range of received optical power satisfying an error vector magnitude of less than 8%rms achieved over 16dB. We consider that our BM-EDFAs with wide linear ranges of output power will be a key device for the LTE-Advanced RoF uplink signal transmission via optical access networks for the next-generation mobile front-haul.

A re-configurable wavelength de-multiplexer for wave-length-division-multiplexed (WDM) radio-over-fiber (RoF) systems, which is specially designed for delivering frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FM-CW) signals, is newly developed. The principle and characteristics of the developed de-multiplexer are described in detail. Then the de-multiplexing performances of 4-channel WDM 32-GHz-band, 8-channel WDM 48-GHz-band, and 5-channel WDM 96-GHz-band FM-CW RoF signals are evaluated with the de-multiplexer.

In this paper, we propose a flexible and high-capacity front-haul link for the uplink transmission of high-speed mobile signals using a cascade of radio-on-radio (RoR) and radio-over-fiber (RoF) systems. To emulate the cases that may occur in the uplink direction, we experimentally investigate the performance of superposing an uplink bursty LTE-A signal on the cascaded system using optical packet signal transmission. The performance of systems using different types of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), including a high-transient EDFA, an automatic-gain-control EDFA, and a burst-mode (BM) EDFA is evaluated and compared. We confirm that the dynamic transience of the EDFAs has a significant influence on the signal performance. By using a BM-EDFA, we confirm successful transmission of the uplink packetized LTE-A signal on the cascaded system. Both the measured error vector magnitude and the received optical power range metrics exceed the requirements. We also estimate the maximum transmission range of the RoR link, and it is confirmed that a sufficiently long range could be achieved for the applications in mobile front-haul networks.

The next generation of information technology demands both high capacity and mobility for applications such as high speed wireless access capable of supporting broadband services. The transport of wireless and wireline signals is converging into a common telecommunication infrastructure. In this paper, we will present the Marie Curie Framework Program 7 project “Wireless and wireline service convergence in next generation optical access networks” (WISCON), which focuses on the conception and study of novel architectures for wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) optical multi-modulation format radio-over-fiber (RoF) systems; this is a promising solution to implement broadband seamless wireless -wireline access networks. This project successfully concluded in autumn 2013, and is being follow up by another Marie Curie project entitled “flexible edge nodes for dynamic optical interconnection of access and core networks” (FENDOI), which will be also briefly described.

This paper proposes a simple and practical scheme to decide the direction of a phased array antenna beam in wireless access systems using Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) technique. The feasibility of the proposed scheme is confirmed by the optical and wireless transmission experiments using 2GHz RoF signals. In addition, two-dimensional steering operation in the millimeter-wave band is demonstrated for targeting future high-speed wireless communication systems. The required system parameters for practical use are also provided by investigating the induced transmission penalties. The proposed detection scheme is applicable to two-dimensional antenna beam steering in the millimeter-wave band by properly designing the fiber length and wavelength variable range.

In this paper we summarize the work conducted in our group in the area of E- and W-band optical high-capacity fiber-wireless links. We present performance evaluations of E- and W-band mm-wave signal generation using photonic frequency upconversion employing both VCSELs and ECLs, along with transmission over different type of optical fibers and for a number of values for the wireless link distance. Hybrid wireless-optical links can be composed of mature and resilient technology available off-the-shelf, and provide functionalities that can add value to optical access networks, specifically in mobile backhaul/fronthaul applications, dense distributed antenna systems and fiber-over-radio scenarios.

We evaluated the single side-band phase noise of a 40 GHz beat signal generated by two free-running lasers. This allowed us to verify the utility of the two free-running lasers is verified as a light source for a next-generation radio-over-fiber system using frequency such as those in the millimeter-wave and terahertz bands. We also measured the phase noise of a frequency quadrupler using a Mach-Zehnder modulator for comparison. The phase noise of the two free-running lasers and the frequency quadrupler are -63.85 and -95.22 dBc/Hz at a 10 kHz offset frequency, respectively.

We propose new electro-optic modulators using a double antenna-coupled electrode structure for radio-over-fiber systems. The proposed modulators are composed of a pair of patch antennas and a standing-wave resonant electrode. By utilizing a pair of patch antennas on SiO2 substrates and a coupled-microstrip line resonant electrode on a LiNbO3 substrate with a symmetric configuration, high-efficiency optical modulation is obtainable for 24 optical waveguides at the same time. The proposed modulators were designed at 58 GHz and their basic operations were demonstrated successfully with an improvement of 9 dB compared to a single antenna-coupled electrode device on a LiNbO3 substrate in our previous work.

We have demonstrated radio-over-fiber transmission of wireless signals at millimeter-wave bands. The system incorporated 25 km of an optical intermediate frequency feeder and 60 GHz OFDM signal transmission at 155 Mbps with a BER of less than 10-6 was achieved within the system cell of a radius of 2.6 m under the channel condition of Line-of-Sight.

We experimentally demonstrated a remote antenna system based on a millimeter-wave (MMW) over fiber scheme for 622-Mbps broadband fixed wireless access systems. In this system, the format of the RF signal is based on a four-carrier signal in which each carrier is modulated by using 64-QAM, to reduce the complexity of the RF system in comparison with the single-carrier QAM system using many more signal-points than 64. The remote antenna system based on the IF-over-fiber scheme was also experimentally demonstrated, as well as the MMW over fiber scheme for comparison. From the experimental results, we found that the remote antenna system based on the MMW over fiber scheme is effective not only from the viewpoints of miniaturization of the remote antenna station and ability to provide a stable millimeter-wave frequency, but also from the viewpoint of link performances such as allowable dynamic range and power penalty, even though the scheme's E/O and O/E devices have a higher cost.

In this paper, we describe the design, optimization and fabrication of high-speed InP/InGaAs heterojunction bipolar phototransistors (photo-HBTs) with both optical cut-off frequency (Fc) and optical gain (Gopt) higher than 100 GHz and 30 dB, respectively. Small- and large-signal models of the photo-HBT have been developed in order to design optoelectronic monolithically integrated circuits (OEIC) using this device. Integrated circuits such as optoelectronic narrow-band amplifiers at 28 GHz with a transimpedance gain of 50 dBΩ and optoelectronic upconverting mixers at 28 and 42 GHz with a mixer conversion gain of 17.8 dB and 9.2 dB respectively, were fabricated. The performances of the mixer circuits were superior to those of individual photo-HBT mixer. These optoelectronic integrated circuits based on InP photo-HBTs are attractive building blocks for realizing compact and cost-effective photoreceivers for millimeter-wave radio-over-fiber links.

This paper newly proposes radio-over-fiber systems using cascaded radio-to-optic direct conversion (ROC) scheme. The ROC system can convert a radio signal into an optical signal with the same signal format. The received carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) performance of the radio-over-fiber systems using the ROC/heterodyne detection (HD) scheme and the ROC/self-heterodyne detection (SHD) scheme are theoretically analyzed. The optimization of an optical modulation index (OMI) in each radio base station (RBS) is also presented. By using the proposed OMI optimization method, the ROC/HD and the ROC/SHD schemes are shown to provide approximately 16 dB and 14 dB improvement over the intensity modulation/direct detection scheme when the number of RBS is 20 and the radio-frequency (RF) signal bandwidth is 150 MHz, respectively. The ROC/SHD scheme enables a receiver structure to become simple while still achieving high received CNR.

This paper proposes higher-order spread spectrum direct optical switching CDMA system and an aliasing canceler to remove the aliasing distortion caused by higher-order bandpass sampling. Theoretical analysis of the signal quality shows that the 3rd order bandpass sampling scheme can improve the carrier-to-interference-power ratio compared with the conventional 1st order bandpass sampling scheme, by 5 dB.