Mitigation strategy for transmission impairments in millimeter-wave radio-over-fiber networks [Invited]

Hybrid fiber-wireless networks for fixed wireless access operating in the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequency region have been actively pursued to provide ultrahigh bandwidth for untethered connectivity. Moving the radio operating frequency into the mm-wave region overcomes the spectral congestion in the lower microwave region and is also capable of providing high-capacity broadband wireless services in a picocellular or microcellular architecture. Optical fiber backhaul provides the broadband interconnectivity between a centralized location and a large number of high-throughput antenna base stations necessary in such an architecture. The transportation of mm-wave wireless signals within the hybrid network is subject to numerous impairments ranging from low conversion efficiency to fiber chromatic dispersion and also to signal degradation due to nonlinearity along the link. One of the major technical challenges in implementing these networks lies in the mitigation of these impairments that the wireless signals experience while traversing the links. In this paper, we present an overview of the different techniques and schemes to overcome some of the impairments for transporting mm-wave signals over optical fibers. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America