A new concept of LANs: passive microwave links hooked onto a fiber optic backbone

The authors present two novel concepts that they propose to apply to microwave LANs (local area networks). The first concept is passive terminal stations, acting as transponders in which no microwave power is generated. This avoids the exposure of users to the microwave field generated in their terminals. The second concept is fixed stations, where most of the microwave active functions are transferred to a central station by means of a fiber-optic link. This allows the microwave hardware in these stations to be very simple. An experiment on such a system, operating at 2.45 GHz, is presented.<>