Optical Generation and Transmission of mmWave Signals in 5G ERA: Experimental Evaluation Paradigm

We demonstrate the generation, of a mmWave signal via the injection of an optical frequency comb (OFC) into an integrated tunable dual distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) laser as well as the fiber transmission and the processing of this signal by an optical beamforming network (OBFN). The dual DBR laser is based on a hybrid indium phosphide (InP) – polymer photonic integrated circuit (PIC). Two different cases have been examined in which the microwave signal is centered around 39 GHz and 60 GHz respectively, carrying quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) formats at 0.5 Gbaud. In this proof-of-concept scenario, the OBFN consists of two optical paths, where the relative true time delay is induced by an optical delay line (ODL). Extensive comparison between the back-to-back (B2B) case and scenarios with transmission over 25 km of standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) has been made using the error-vector magnitude (EVM) and the bit-error ratio (BER) as evaluation criteria. In all cases, error-free transmission was suggested for all QPSK signals, whereas a worst-case EVM of 11.8% was observed for 16-QAM transmission, successfully showcasing the concept’s potential. The generated microwave signal’s frequency can be set arbitrarily high, provided that high-speed photodetection equipment is available for the detection and down-conversion of the signal. Extension to higher antenna elements (AEs) numbers is straight-forward, relying only on the number of available photodetectors.

I. Introduction

The emerging applications enabled by the deployment of the fifth generation (5G) of cellular networks and beyond, increase the demand for higher data rates. Thus, utilization of higher frequency bands in the mmWave regime, where larger spans of unallocated spectrum are available becomes essential. To that end, significant reduction of the cell size is required, thus increasing the number of cells that need to be deployed to provide sufficient coverage. To minimize the cost and increase the spectral efficiency of the 5G picocellular system, a centralized approach for the generation of the mmWave signals, together with analog radio over fiber (A-RoF) techniques for the distribution network emerges as a promising solution [1].