A high gain active photonic antenna for high speed backhaul link: A system analysis

A high-gain active photonic antenna is proposed to provide long distance optical and wireless backhaul link. To support service for long wireless distance, RF amplifier and high gain antenna is integrated to the photonic antenna concept. High speed feature is achieved through utilization of simultaneous multi-channel WLAN transmitted through the photonic antenna. Using this notion, the use of four simultaneous channels can potentially provide 216 Mbps at 5 km and 120 Mbps at 7.7 km. Utilization of two simultaneous channels is potentially capable of supporting 108 Mbps at 13.4 km and 72 Mbps at 16.3 km. The speed can be increased if modified WLAN protocol, such as Nstreme2, is employed. These results are significantly higher speed compared to current common practice. This study also remarks that the downlink side is the performance limiter of the photonic antenna system, therefore become the priority to be optimized. Cognitive radio can be adopted to improve the optical link bandwidth utilization and increase aggregate data rate.