Optical Tandem Single-Sideband-Based WDM Interface for Millimeter-Wave Fiber-Radio Multisector Antenna Base Station

We propose and demonstrate a spectrally efficient wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) optical interface for millimeter-wave radio access networks with the capability of being integrated within a standard 100-GHz WDM infrastructure. The proposed WDM optical interface is realized by the use of a multiport optical circulator in conjunction with fiber Bragg grating filters. The interface supports demultiplexing of wavelength-interleaved optical tandem single-sideband modulated signals for a millimeter-wave fiber radio backbone with a sectorized antenna interface at the remote base station. The functionality of the interface is verified experimentally for RF signals at 29 and 31.6 GHz with 155-Mb/s binary phase-shift keying data. The effects of optical impairments on the transmission performance of WDM channels are experimentally analyzed. The experimental results demonstrate that the WDM optical interface performs efficiently with very low channel impairments due to optical crosstalk.