This paper describes an overview of wireless communications based on fiber-radio technologies from the viewpoint of system applications, particularly in the area of microcell radio systems. Feasible fiber-radio networks design are detailed in order to increase system performance and cost effectiveness. The benefits of the evolving fiber-radio microcell system are discussed with a spectral delivery scheme to meet traffic demands. Foreseeable electronic and optic technologies are reviewed in light of the key parameters to optimize the overall system. This strategy will play a role in broadband and flexible networks.

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 reviews fiber optic link techniques from the microwave and millimeter-wave transmission point of view. Several architectures of fiber optic links are reviewed. The application of MMIC technologies to the optical receivers are discussed and 26-GHz subcarrier transmission experimental works are described. Novel fiber optic links which utilize both optical device nonlinearities and microwave functional circuits are also reviewed. A system concept of millimeter-wave cellular radio using fiber optic links is finally discussed.

In this paper, we investigate various technology aspects in fiber-to-the-microcell systems. Background studies on radio propagation environment and system operations are provided first. The fundamental linearity characteristics of a directly and externally modulated optical links are analyzed next. An overall comparison between the two types of optical links, and system requirements among all types of wireless systems (from macrocells to picocells) are presented. Future research and development directions are also suggested.

Subcarrier multiplexing uses the available fiber bandwidth in optical transmission, efficiently. Semiconductor lasers, which are used as optical sources in such systems, exhibit nonlinear characteristics. Nonlinearity degrades the performance of such transmission systems. For nonlinearity compensation, nonlinear predistortion may be incorporated prior to the laser. Characteristics of this nonlinear block invert those of the laser source. Performance of the radio subcarrier multiplexed system with and without predistortion is evaluated by harmonic and intermodulation distortions analyses. Nonlinear distortion level decreases significantly when predistortion is employed prior to the laser. This enhancement results in system requirements on carrier-to-noise ratio being met for FM, 4-level QAM and HDTV (Zenith proposal) radio subcarriers. This amount of increase in carrier-to-noise ratio is a function of the optical modulation index.

This paper presents a delivery mechanism using a spectrum delivery switch (SDS) in a microcell system. In our fiber-optic microcell systems, modulators, demodulators and spectrum delivery switches are installed in a central station. A spectrum delivery switch controls provide flexible dynamic channel assignment and functions as a hand over algorithm. This control method employs a TDMA time slot switch and a MODEM connection switch. The relation between blocking probability and offered traffic are described and computer simulation results are shown. The results indicate an improvement in this blocking probability over conventional systems.

Fiber-optic passive double star (PDS) network is described as an access network for microcellular radio communication systems. The intrinsic characteristics of the PDS network, reduction in the optical fiber count and flexible access capability, are examined. A unit cell structure is introduced which enables the PDS network to be effectively incorporated into the access portion of microcellular radio communication systems. The reduced total fiber length in the unit cell structure based on the PDS network is discussed in comparison with the conventional architecture. Calculations show that there is an optimum splitting ratio that minimizes the total fiber length. When the microcell radius and service area radius are 100m and 10km, respectively, the total fiber length of the PDS network is reduced to only about 9% of that of the conventional single star (SS) network for a splitting ratio of 34. Resource sharing and handover between microcells in a unit cell are performed by using the dynamic channel allocation function of the PDS system. Substantial performance improvement for loaded traffic can be obtained by resource sharing. When the splitting ratio is 32, the available traffic of a base station (BS) increases from 0.9 [erl/BS] to 3.4 [erl/BS] by adopting dynamic channel allocation for the lost call probability of 0.01.

This paper proposes a new subscriber distribution method called FTTA (Fiber To The Area), which uses millimeter-wave radio band to connect subscribers with base station and optical fiber to connect base station with control station in order to obtain broad-band transmission. Usually two main causes of signal degradation, i.e., rainfall attenuation on radio channel and intermodulation distortion on optical channel are considered in this system. Taking into considerations of these two factors, we analyze the available capacity of FTTA system for various 2²ⁿQAM modulation levels. The analysis clarifies that there exists an optimum modulation level that can maxize the available capacity, and AGC circuit in the base station is useful to compensate the rainfall attenuation. It is shown that 18.0Gbps is available under the optimum modulation method of the 64QAM with AGC and 12.0Gbps under the 16QAM without AGC when 20 carriers are used.

A fiber-optic transmission system for linking radio base stations to the mobile communication center is developed, and its performance is evaluated. The introduction of this system yields two main improvements: optimum zone allocation to increase radio frequency utilization efficiency and the elimination of service quality issues such as dead zones and traffic imbalance. Being optical, the system suffers from the interferometric noise and distortion created by multiple reflections within the fiber. Moreover, because system response is much different from that of optical CATV systems, we clarify the optical parameter selection criteria and hypothetical return loss model for an embedded fiber infrastructure. An optical multiplexing method is also introduced that reduces the quantity of fiber and connectors, as well as splicing and cable installation costs. A new ternary optical multiplexing architecture combined with a cost-effective self-tuning type WDM technique and a high isolation type circulator are proposed for the 1.3µm wavelength region. The performance of low distortion high power common amplifiers is measured with the aim of reducing the size and weight of back-up batteries, and to improve the packaging density of the typical base station.

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.

This paper presents a potential FM double modulation technique for subcarrier optical transmission in order to improve the input dynamic range. The proposed theory of FM double modulation is presented. The BER performance and input dynamic range are shown theoretically and experimentally compared with conventional direct intensity modulation. It was found that the dynamic range could be experimentally improved by 20dB compared with the conventional method by using FM double modulation. The proposed technique achieved an input dynamic range of 60 dB even when using a commercial Fabri-Perot LD.

An optical receiver for hybrid SCM video distribution systems that distribute AM, QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) and FM TV signals simultaneously is investigated. We propose a novel receiver configuration called the Frequency Division type Receiver (FDR) with consists of a photo detector, filter, and multiple preamplifiers. The receiver is compared with existing receivers in terms of optical sensitivity, distortion characteristics, and configuration simplicity. We clarify that the newly developed FDR type receiver is most suitable for hybrid SCM video distribution systems.

Atmospheric optical communication (AOC) system using subcarrier PSK modulation is proposed and its superiority to OOK modulation in the presence of scintillation is discussed theoretically. An experimental AOC setup with a subcarrier modulated by 155.52(Mb/s) DPSK at light wave-length λ=0.83(µm) over an 1.8(km) outdoor path is employed to show the performance. Theoretical and experimental results are compared under scintillation in clear weather and a good agreement is observed. Finally, AOC systems using subcarrier M-ary PSK and multiple subcarriers are proposed and discussed.

Fiber-optic microcellular system has been studied actively as an excellent system for solving the equipment cost problems in microcellular systems. However, the occurrence of intermodulation distortion (IMD) arising from the nonlinearity of the laser diode used for E/O conversion which degrades the transmission quality is a serious problem in this system. In this paper, we propose a new frequency switching/IM3 reduction method, which dynamically reassigns the carrier frequencies to minimize the carrier to IMD power ratio under the hostile environment with time-varying received carrier strength, and analyze the performance improvements by the proposed method. The improvements obtained both for the worst value of the overall CNR and for the overall CNR in a specific user are numerically made clear. It is also shown that if the interval between frequency reassignings is set less than one second, a sufficient improvement in the overall CNR is achievable.

Corresponding to the development of B-ISDN, integrated services for data, voice, etc. are imperatively required for the so called third generation wireless communication networks. In this paper, I-ISMA (Idle Signal Multiple Access for Integrated services) is proposed to transmit integrated voice and data traffic from dispersed terminals to a base station. In the system, data packets and the first packets of talkspurts of conversational speeches are transmitted using ISMA protocol over a shared channel while subsequent packets of talkspurts are sent with time reservation technique. The channel capacity of I-ISMA is evaluated and compared with that of PRMA. The region in which I-ISMA has larger capacity than PRMA is figured out. Generally speaking, I-ISMA has larger capacity than PRMA when the duration for transmitting and detecting an idle signal is not too long and the channel is not too congested by the reserved voice transmissions. When we concern real time voice transmission, delay is one of the most important performance measures. Only is a qualitative discussion on delay performance given here. The quantitative evaluation is obtained by the dynamic analysis in our succeeding paper.

This paper analyses the amplification characteristics of a two-loop controlled switching power amplifier for a digital portable telephone and presents the amplifier which has a flat gain and small phase delay from dc to 100kHz. This amplifier is a modification of a switching regulator and it uses two-loop control to achieve a wideband amplification characteristic. Optimum amplification characteristics, however, can't be designed by using the conventional method for designing a switching regulator because a flat gain and small phase delay in an amplification characteristic has not been considered for most switching regulators. This paper analyses in detail the small-signal transfer functions of the switching power amplifier and shows the behaviour of zero and poles. It also shows the boundary condition of large-signal operation. A new design procedure of a switching power amplifier is presented, and the analytical results are verified by experiments.

Markov chain models are used to derive the average stationary throughput and delay performance of Idle-Signal Casting Multiple Access (ICMA), with and without Failure Detection (/FD), protocols which are suitable for use in mobile packet radio local area networks, where propagation impairments are prevalent. The models consider the effects of pure Rayleigh fading on channel access and packet transmission. Numerical results, validated by computer simulations, are obtained that enable a quantitative study of the performance of the protocols. It is found that the performance of the ICMA/FD protocol is affected more significantly by fading on the base-to-mobile channel than is the performance of the ICMA protocol. In addition, performance improves with larger packet sizes eventhough such packets are more vulnerable to failure due to fading.

A technique for reducing fiber four-wave mixing (FWM) in multichannel transmissions is proposed. Birefringent elements are inserted on the way of transmission lines. Due to the effect of birefringent elements on the polarization states, the effective crosstalk due to FWM is expected to be 3/16 of that in the worst case in conventional systems.