A Colorless Remote Antenna Unit for Bidirectional Photonic Antenna Remoting

Author

Beibei Zhu ; Gang Chen ; Fangzheng Zhang ; Ronghui Guo ; Dan Zhu ; Shilong Pan

Author_Institution

Key Lab. of Radar Imaging & Microwave Photonics, Nanjing Univ. of Aeronaut. & Astronaut., Nanjing, China

Volume

24

Issue

4

fYear

2014

fDate

Apr-14

Firstpage

275

Lastpage

277

Abstract

A colorless (wavelength-independent) remote antenna unit (RAU) for bidirectional photonic antenna remoting is proposed and demonstrated, which is based on a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier electroabsorption modulator (SOA-EAM). Due to the gain saturation effect in the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) of the reflective SOA-EAM, the microwave signal carried by the downlink optical signal is received and effectively erased. Then, the electroabsorption modulator (EAM) converts the uplink RF signal to an optical signal, which is reflected back to the center office (CO) by the high-reflection coated facet of the device to provide the uplink service. No signal downconversion is needed since the modulation bandwidth of the EAM can reach tens of GHz. A proof-of-concept experiment is carried out. The RAU performs well in a bidirectional radio over fiber (ROF) system for providing 500 Mb/s wireless services centered at 2 GHz.

Keywords

electro-optical modulation; electroabsorption; microwave photonics; radio-over-fibre; semiconductor optical amplifiers; EAM modulation bandwidth; bidirectional ROF system; bidirectional photonic antenna remoting; bidirectional radio-over-fiber system; bit rate 500 Mbit/s; colorless remote antenna unit; downlink optical signal; frequency 2 GHz; gain saturation effect; high-reflection coated facet; microwave signal; optical signal; proof-of-concept experiment; reflective SOA-EAM; reflective semiconductor optical amplifier electroabsorption modulator; uplink RF signal; uplink service; wavelength-independent RAU; wavelength-independent remote antenna unit; Antennas; Downlink; Optical modulation; Optical polarization; Optical saturation; Photonics; Uplink; Antenna; microwave photonics; radio over fiber;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1531-1309

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LMWC.2013.2295232

Filename

6714447