Implementation of a photonic antenna in optical OFDM link

Abstract

The integration of photonic antennas with radio over fiber (RoF) systems can serve high dense populated areas such as airports, shopping centers, dead-zone areas and tunnels. In this paper, we present an optical wireless communication downlink with a photonic antenna. Our proposed radio over fiber (RoF) system is to carry modulated orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals with a 2.4 GHz radio frequency over a cost effective optical link. A comparison of using a photonic antenna as a passive and an active in the RoF system is presented. The active photonic antenna (APHA) is mounted at the end of the optical link to the photodiode as a package of a band-pass filter (BPF) and a radio frequency power amplifier. The photonic antenna scattering parameters are implemented into the optical system simulation tools with various fiber length and free space loss (FSL). The wireless link is implemented for a transmission distance up to 100 meters. The transmitted signal is fully carried over a radio frequency signal and then optically carried over a standard single mode fiber (SSMF). The measurements of the EIPR and SNR were done with 0 dBm RF input into the directly modulated laser (DML) for all the simulations. The results show that the analog optical wireless link is very suitable to carry the OFDM signals. Moreover, the active photonic antenna provides sufficient service for more than 30 meters compared to the passive antenna.