RoFnet – Reconfigurable Radio over Fiber Network Architecture Overview

Abstract

This paper introduces the basic operational concepts of the RoFnet – reconfigurable radio over fiber network, which is a project supported by the Portuguese Foundation forScience and Technology. This project proposes an innovative radio over fiber optical access network architecture, which combines a low cost base station (BS) design, incorporating reflective semiconductor optical amplifiers, with fiber dispersion mitigation provided by optical single sideband modulation techniques. Optical wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) techniques are used to simplify the access network architecture allowing for different BSs to be fed by a common fiber. Different wavelength channels can be allocated to different BSs depending on user requirements. Additionally, in order to improve radio coverage within a cell, it is considered a sectorized antenna interface. The combination of subcarrier multiplexing with WDM, further simplifies the network architecture, by using a specific wavelength channel to feed an individual BS and different subcarriers to drive the individual antenna sectors within the BS.