Full-duplex WDM-RoF system based on OFC with dual frequency microwave signal generation and wavelength reuse

Abstract

Abstract A novel full-duplex wavelength division multiplexing radio-over-fiber (WDM-RoF) system based on optical frequency comb (OFC), which can generate dual frequency microwave signal simultaneously and realize wavelength reuse for uplink transmission, is proposed. In this proposal, OFC, which serves as the optical carriers of the WDM-RoF network, is performed by cascading two electro-absorption modulators (EAMs) and a frequency modulator (FM). The optical carriers are modulated by the radio frequency (RF) signal in LiNbO3 Mach-Zehnder modulator (LN-MZM) to produce multiple optical single sidebands (OSSB). The multiple OSSB signals are divided into multiple individual channels by AWG, and each channel contains two optical carriers and two corresponding +1 order sidebands. The first optical carrier of each channel is reflected by fiber bragg grating (FBG) and reused to provide the optical source for the uplink transmission in the base station (BS), which simplify the configuration of base station. Dual-frequency microwave signals are generated in the downlink by beating the remaining second optical carrier and two +1 order sidebands. In the simulation, 6 WDM channels each carrying 2.5 Gb/s downlink data have been up-converted to 15 GHz and 25 GHz microwave signals simultaneously, and 6 WDM channels each carrying 2.5 Gb/s uplink baseband data are sent to the central station. Both downlink and uplink transmission with less than 1 dB power penalty on average after 20 km SMF transmission. This full-duplex WDM-RoF system shows high spectral-efficiency, large communication capacity, simple cost-efficient configuration and good performance over long distance transmission.