Full-Duplex 1.0 Gbit/s Data Transmission Over 60 GHz Radio-on-Fiber Access System Based on the Loop-Back Optical Heterodyne Technique

Full-duplex transmission over a 60 GHz radio-on-fiber access system based on the optical heterodyne technique is verified in this paper. With this technique, an optical carrier generator on the transmitting side consolidates the functions of wavelength and polarization control for optical heterodyne detection in uplinks and optical millimeter-wave generation in downlinks, on behalf of each optical transmitter/receiver. Therefore, the whole system configuration can be significantly simplified. A full-duplex 1.0 Gbit/s transmission experiment over 10 km of single-mode fiber, which represents an access network transmission, is demonstrated using the simultaneous modulation/photodetection operation of an electroabsorption modulator (EAM). Bit error rates of less than 10^-9 were obtained in both the uplink and downlink without noticeable mutual interference, even though the laser source and the EAM is shared by both links, and no significant dispersion-induced degradation was observed. Moreover, the experimental results showed that an optical link budget of 9.2 dB can be achieved with the experimental configuration.