Simplified Generation, Transport, and Data Recovery of Millimeter-Wave Signal in a Full-Duplex Bidirectional Fiber-Wireless System

A millimeter-wave (mm-wave) full-duplex bidirectional fiber-wireless (Fi-Wi) system employing a combination of uncorrelated optical heterodyning and radio frequency (RF) self-homodyning is proposed and demonstrated. The proposed system significantly simplifies the optical mm-wave generation, transport, and data recovery both in downlink and uplink directions. Experimental results confirm that such a bi-directional architecture can successfully avoid most of the high-speed electrooptic and RF devices from both the central station and base stations, and transforms the mm-wave Fi-Wi link to any conventional optical communication link in the access or metro domain.