DWDM millimeter-wave radio-on-fiber systems

We describe some of our recent results on DWDM mm-wave radio-on-fiber (RoF) technology for future broadband wireless systems. A supercontinuum (SC) light source is a promising multiwavelength light source for the system with photonic up-conversion. Multiplexing and demultiplexing schemes for optical frequency interleaving in order to extend the number of antenna base stations can be constructed using a properly designed arrayed-waveguide grating (AWG). We demonstrate a full-duplex WDM mm-wave RoF system using a SC light source. The periodic nature of AWG, where the period is free spectral range (FSR), is used for utilizing the full bandwidth of the SC light source. Half of the SC output modes are used for downlink transmission with photonic upconversion. Another half of the SC output modes are used for uplink transmission with photonic downconversion. These techniques are effective to use a wealth of optical frequency resources from the SC light source. Two-channel downlink and one-channel uplink 60GHz band RoF signals were simultaneously transmitted over 25-km standard single-mode fiber with error-free and no noticeable power penalty.