Simple Multi-RAT RoF System With $2\times2$ MIMO Wireless Transmission

Abstract

A simple multi-radio access technology (multi-RAT) capable radio over fiber (RoF) system with 2 × 2 multiple-inputmultiple-output (MIMO) wireless transmission is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The transmission of sub-6 GHz and 60 GHz millimeter-wave (MMW) services is enabled by a dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator (DDMZM) and an optical interleaver. In the central office (CO), sub-6 GHz and 30 GHz signals are applied to the dual branches of the DDMZM which is biased at the quadrature point. After transmission over singlemode fiber (SMF), the two services are separated by the optical interleaver. One output port of the interleaver is used for delivering the sub-6 GHz signal while the other one is used for the generation and transmission of the 60 GHz MMW signal. Furthermore, we also demonstrate the MIMO technology can be used in the proposed architecture to improve the capacity. A proofof-concept experiment is performed to verify the feasibility of the proposed scheme. In the experiment, a 1.3 Gb/s orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal at 55 GHz is transmitted over 25 km of SMF and 1 m 2 × 2 MIMO wireless distance while a 675 Mb/s OFDM signal at 0.375 GHz is delivered over 25 km of SMF at the same time.