Optical Fiber Technology 38 (2017) 123–129

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Optical Fiber Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/yofte

Regular Articles

An analog mobile fronthaul based on low and high frequency hybrid MARK
network for next generation mobile system
⁎
Zicui Zhang, Jianxin Ma , Qi Zhang, Shanguo Huang
Beijing Key Laboratory of Space-Ground Interconnection and Convergence, State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and Optical Communications, School of
Electronic Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, 100876, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: We have proposed an analog mobile fronthaul (MFH) architecture for next generation mobile networks, which
Hybrid network can simultaneously transmit 2.4 GHz, 28 GHz and 60 GHz RF signals with data rates at 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps and
Mobile fronthaul (MFH) 10 Gbps, respectively. Low-frequency (LF) and high-frequency (HF) hybrid networking is achieved for sup-
Millimeter-wave (MMW) porting the conventional seamless telecommunication networks and emerging small cellular networks. The
Radio over fiber (RoF)
millimeter wave (MMW) signal at 60 GHz can be extracted by filtering and then transmitted to multiple further
remote radio units (RRUs) to implement the future plug and play flexible networking in the hotspot areas. After
analyzing the principle of our proposed MFH link theoretically in detail, the simulation is conducted to de-
monstrate the proposed MFH link. The simulation results show that the three RF signals can maintain good
performance after transmitting over a 20 km standard single mode fiber (SSMF).

1. Introduction
A cost-effective radio access network (RAN) plays a key role in to-
day’s 4G mobile network, and will do more in the future 5G one. Cloud
Radio Access Network(C-RAN) has been evolving as a promising ar-
chitecture for 4G mobile network which partitions the base station
functions into processing and control functions in baseband units
(BBUs), and fundamental radio components in remote radio units
(RRUs). C-RAN has emerged as a promising solution to the un-
precedented traffic growth due to its potential to reduce capital and
operational costs and to ease the cell association, load balancing, and
interference management [1]. The Mobile Fronthaul (MFH), a new
network segment that appears in C-RAN, is the link between the BBU
and the RRU. The digital MFH, applied in the 4 G mobile network at
present is usually based on on–off-keying (OOK) modulation and is
mostly supported by the Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) [2].
Nevertheless, CPRI may not meet the challenge of supporting the rapid
increase of throughput because of digitization of samples from the radio
domain. The other option, based on analog Radio over Fiber (RoF)
technology, becomes attractive. Analog RoF keeps the expensive Di-
gital-to-Analog Converters (DAC) and Analog-to-Digital Converters
(ADC) inside the BBUs and simplifies the RRUs where only Optical-to-
Electrical Converters (O/E) and radio components are required [3,4].
Compared to the digital MFH, the analog MFH based on RoF has a lot of
advantages. The bandwidth requirement is lowered greatly, especially
for the transmission of high speed millimeter-wave (MMW) signals, and
the strict requirements of signal synchronization and jitter problem in
CPRI method can be loosened [13,14].
Actually, the Radio Frequency (RF) signals that most MFH links
actually carry are mainly concentrated in the frequencies lower than
6 GHz or only in the MMW bands [7–10]. In [1], an optical MFH link is
proposed, in which the optical carrier is modulated by different inter-
mediate frequencies (75 MHz, 175 MHz, 275 MHz and 375 MHz) with
subcarrier multiplexing. Also an architecture based analog MFH,
transporting LTE-A like signals with RF carrier at 3.5 GHz, is proposed
in [6]. Certainly, the MMW is generated optically in MFH systems, such
as an implementation employing 92.5 GHz for downlink transmission
and 96 GHz for uplink direction [7], and the 60 GHz MMW link used for
analog MFH in [1,5,8]. Recently, all-spectrum access is proposed to
meet the broadband access bandwidth for the future 5G wireless com-
munication. It involves low-frequency (LF) bands below 6 GHz and
high-frequency (HF) bands above 6 GHz, where the former is the core
bands of 5G that are used for seamless coverage, and the latter is the
supplementary bands that are used to achieve high data rates in hotspot
areas. Nowadays, it has been widely recognized that the high-frequency
range from 6 GHz to 100 GHz can provide abundant available spectrum
to achieve the ultra-high capacity and ultrahigh data rates required by
5G [15]. The main candidate bands for 5G focused by the industry
include 15 GHz, 18 GHz, 28 GHz, 38 GHz, 45 GHz, 60 GHz and 72 GHz.
A lot of research groups from industry and academia are making efforts

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: majianxinxy@163.com (J. Ma).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.yofte.2017.09.007
Received 24 April 2017; Received in revised form 2 September 2017; Accepted 7 September 2017
1068-5200/ © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Z. Zhang et al.
to mine their respective advantages for applying in next generation
wireless communication [11,12]. Therefore, an MFH system based on
analog RoF, combining fiber and multiband transmission, can be very
attractive owing to its large available bandwidths and support for all-
spectrum access [9].
In this paper, we propose a novel analog MFH architecture, which
can simultaneously transmit 2.4 GHz, 28 GHz and 60 GHz RF signals
with data rates at 100 Mbps, 1Gbps and 10Gbps, respectively, for pro-
viding different services for users according to the data rate require-
ments. Also the MMW signal at 60 GHz can be sequentially transmitted
over a standard single mode fiber (SSMF) serving multiple further
RRUs. Cascaded RRU structure in MMW band helps MMW signals with
high data rate travel longer distance, and LF and HF hybrid networking
meets the requirements of seamless coverage in wide area and high data
rate in hotspot areas in the next generation mobile communication.
The paper is organized as follows: in the Section 2, the proposed
MHH architecture is described. In the Section 3, the operation principle
is analyzed theoretically. In the Section 4, the concept-proof simulation
link is built and the simulation results, including constellation diagrams
and EVM curves, are given and discussed. Finally, conclusions are
drawn in Section 5.
2. Proposed MFH architecture
In this section, the proposed analog MFH architecture for next
generation mobile communication system is described, as shown in
Fig. 1. The analog RoF enables multiband and multiservice coexistence
in a shared infrastructure without extra interference. In our scheme, the
RF signals at different carrier frequencies (2.4 GHz, 28 GHz and
60 GHz) with data rates at 100Mbps, 1Gbps and 10Gbps, respectively
are distributed along the RoF link. Therefore, different services for users
can be provided by using different frequencies or time intervals ac-
cording to the client rate requirements. In the analog MFH architecture,
2.4 GHz band is utilized for wide-area seamless coverage to meet daily
network requirements, 28 GHz band is supplied to meet temporary high
data rate requirements such as HD movies downloading, and 60 GHz
band is employed as supplementary for seamless coverage to meet ul-
trahigh data rate requirements in hotspot areas. Generally, we can
deliver fundamental information to users by modulating lightwave with
RF signals at 2.4 GHz with data rate at 100Mbps in the BBU pool; and
when higher data rate access is required, the lightwave will be modu-
lated by the RF signals at 2.4 GHz and 28 GHz for enhancing user ex-
perience. At hotspot areas, the lightwave will be modulated by the RF
signals at 2.4 GHz, 28 GHz and 60 GHz simultaneously for the ultrahigh
124
Optical Fiber Technology 38 (2017) 123–129
data rate requirements to ensure the quality and bandwidth of com-
munication. Then we transmit the modulated optical signal to the RRU
over an SSMF. In the RRU, the optical signal is directly detected by a
photo detector (PD) to recover back to the required radio frequency
signals. Then these RF signals can be delivered to users by wireless
propagation in the air via antennas. To enhance the performance of the
wireless propagation, many enable technologies will be adopted in the
future 5 G, such as beamforming, massive MIMO and ultra-dense de-
ployment (UDN). In the MFH architecture, beamforming will be ex-
pected to use for increasing the distance of MMW signals transmission
and UDN will help the RF signal at 60 GHz to feed more users in hotspot
areas. In addition, in our scheme, the 60 GHz optical MMW signal can
be sequentially transmitted over an SSMF to the further RRU possibly
working as a supplementary to realize the future plug and play flexible
networking in the hotspot areas.
3. Operational principle
To analyze the implement of the proposed MFH architecture, the
basic link is setup for describing its operational principle, as shown in
Fig. 2. In the BBU, using one Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM), the
lightwave from laser diode (LD) is modulated by RF signals at different
carrier frequencies based on single sideband (SSB) modulation pattern.
To provide different services for users according to the data rate re-
quirements, one selective switch is used in the link for choosing dif-
ferent RF signals as the RF drive signals of MZM. For the first case, only
RF signal at ω1 is carried, for the second case, the RF signals at ω1 and
ω2 are combined together, and for the third case, the transmitted signal
includes three tones at ω1, ω2 and ω3. Here, we discuss the general case,
where the RF signals are
VRF (t ) = K1 V1 (t )cos[ω1 t + θ1 (t )] + K2 V2 (t )cos[ω2 t + θ2 (t )]
+ K3 V3 (t )cos[ω3 t + θ3 (t )]. (1)
In which, K1, K2 and K3 can be realized by electrical switches with
the values of 0 or 1 for selecting the signals for transmission and V1(t),
V2(t) and V3(t), θ1(t), θ2(t) and θ3(t) and ω1, ω2, and ω3 represent the
magnitudes, phases and frequencies of different RF signals, respec-
tively. So the lightwave field at the output of MZM can be represented
as
Fig. 1. The diagram of our proposed MFH architecture. BBU: base-
band unit; RoF: radio over fiber; MMW: millimeter wave.
Z. Zhang et al. Optical Fiber Technology 38 (2017) 123–129

Fig. 2. Principle of our proposed MFH link. BBU: baseband unit; RRU: remote radio unit; LD: laser diode; MZM: Mach-Zehnder modulator; SSMF: standard single mode fiber; PD: photo
detector; EA: electrical amplifier; PS: power splitter; OBPF: optical band pass filter; BPF: band pass filter; LO: local oscillator; IL: interleaver; OA: optical amplifier.

Fig. 3. Simulation setup of our proposed MFH link. BBU:

baseband unit; RRU: remote radio unit; LD: laser diode;
MZM: Mach-Zehnder modulator; SSMF: standard single-
mode fiber; ATT: optical attenuator; PD: photo detector;
OBPF: optical band pass filter; BPF: band pass filter; LO:
local oscillator.

Fig. 4. The generated optical spectra in the BBU when the

switch select is put in different positions; (a) First case:
2.4 GHz; (b) Second case: 2.4 GHz and 28 GHz; (c) Third
case: 2.4 GHz, 28 GHz and 60 GHz.

Fig. 5. The generated electrical spectra of RF signals in the

RRU when the switch select is put in different positions; (a)
First case: 2.4 GHz; (b) Second case: 2.4 GHz and 28 GHz;
(c) Third case: 2.4 GHz, 28 GHz and 60 GHz.

125
Z. Zhang et al. Optical Fiber Technology 38 (2017) 123–129

J0(x) ≈ 1 and J1(x) ≈ x. It can be seen that the generated optical MMW
signal has four tones with one blank and the others carrying the data
signals.

Eo (t ) ≈
Aπα
Vπ { 2 Vπ
2π
exp[j (ωc t + π /4)]
+ K1 V1 (t )exp[j ((ωc + ω1) t + θ1 (t ) + π /2)]
+ K2 V2 (t )exp[j ((ωc + ω2) t + θ2 (t ) + π /2)]
+ K3 V3 (t )exp[j ((ωc + ω3) t + θ3 (t ) + π /2)]} (4)

Then the modulated optical signal is transmitted over an optical

fiber with the attenuation coefficient of γ and propagation constant of
β(ω). In the RRU, the optical signal is directly detected by a square-law
Fig. 6. The EVMs of 16-QAM signal at 2.4 GHz at the optical BtB and after 20 km SSMF PD to recover back the required RF signals, and the output photocurrent
transmission at the received optical power of −25 dBm to −19 dBm. Insets: the con- can be written as
stellation diagrams of the 16-QAM signal at EVM of 12.5% at the optical BtB and after
20 km SSMF transmission. I (t ) ≈ μ|Eo (z ,t )|2
μA2 π 2α2 2 Vπ
= exp(−γz ) exp[j (ωc t + π /4−β (ωc ) z )−γz /2]
Vπ2 2π

+ K1 V1 (t )exp[j ((ωc + ω1) t + θ1 (t ) + π /2−β (ωc + ω1) z )−γz /2]

+ K1 V1 (t )exp[j ((ωc + ω2) t + θ2 (t ) + π /2−β (ωc + ω2) z )−γz /2]
α
{ π
E0 (t ) = 2 Aexp(jωc t ) × expj V [K1 V1 (t )cos(ω1 t + θ1 (t ))
π
+ K2 V2 (t )exp[j ((ωc + ω3) t + θ3 (t ) + π /2−β (ωc + ω3) z )−γz /2]|2
+K2 V2 (t )cos(ω2 t + θ2 (t )) + K3 V3 (t )cos(ω3 t + θ3 (t ) )]
π
+expj V [K1 V1 (t )cos(ω1 t + θ1 (t )−π / 2)
π
=
μA2 π 2α2
Vπ2
exp(−γz ) { Vπ2
2π 2
+ [K1 V1 (t )]2 + [K2 V2 (t )]2 + [K2 V2 (t )]2

+K2 V2 (t )cos(ω2 t + θ2 (t )−π / 2) + 2 Vπ K1 V1 (t )/(π )cos[ω1 t + π /4 + θ1 (t ) + β (ωc ) z−β (ωc + ω1) z ]

+ K3 V3 (t )cos(ω3 t + θ3 (t )−π / 2 ) + VD]} (2)
where A and ωc are the magnitude and angular frequency of the
lightwave from the LD, and Vπ, α and VD are, respectively, the switching
voltage, insertion loss and relative DC bias voltage of the MZM. The
output lightwave field Eo(t) is expanded with the first kind Bessel
function. After passing through an optical bandpass filter (BPF) for
suppressing the unnecessary higher-order sidebands, the lightwave filed
becomes
2 Aα
Eo (t ) =
2
J0 [πK1 V1 (t )/ Vπ ] J0 [πK2 V2 (t )/ Vπ ] J0 [πK3 V3 (t )/ Vπ ]exp[j (ωc t + π /4)]
+ AαJ1 [πK1 V1 (t )/ Vπ ] J0 [πK2 V2 (t )/ Vπ ] J0 [πK3 V3 (t )/ Vπ ]exp[j ((ωc + ω1) t + θ1 (t ) + π /2)]
+ AαJ0 [πK1 V1 (t )/ Vπ ] J1 [πK2 V2 (t )/ Vπ ] J0 [πK3 V3 (t )/ Vπ ]exp[(j (ωc + ω2) t + θ2 (t ) + π /2)]
+ AαJ0 [πK1 V1 (t )/ Vπ ] J0 [πK2 V2 (t )/ Vπ ] J1 [πK3 V3 (t )/ Vπ ]exp[(j (ωc + ω3) t + θ3 (t ) + π /2)].
(3)
Here the modulation indices for the three tones are smaller enough
and can be regarded as the small signal modulation, so there are
+ 2 Vπ K2 V2 (t )/(π )cos[ω2 t + π /4 + θ2 (t ) + β (ωc ) z
−β (ωc + ω2) z ]
+ 2 Vπ K3 V3 (t )/(π )cos[ω3 t + π /4 + θ3 (t ) + β (ωc ) z
−β (ωc + ω3) z ]
+ 2K1 K2 V1 (t ) V2 (t )cos[(ω2−ω1) t + θ2 (t )−θ1 (t )−β (ωc + ω2) z
+ β (ωc + ω1) z ]
+ 2K1 K3 V1 (t ) V3 (t )cos[(ω3−ω1) t + θ3 (t )−θ1 (t )−β (ωc + ω3) z
+ β (ωc + ω1) z ]
+ 2K2 K3 V2 (t ) V3 (t )cos[(ω3−ω2) t + θ3 (t )−θ2 (t )−β (ωc + ω3) z
+ β (ωc + ω2) z ]}
(5)
where μ is the responsivity of PD and z is optical fiber length. We can
see that different RF signals can be carried by the same lightwave at

Fig. 7. The EVMs of 16-QAM signal at 28 GHz and 16-QAM signal at

2.4 GHz at the optical BtB and after 20 km SSMF transmission at the
received optical power of −21 dBm to −12 dBm. Insets: the con-
stellation diagrams for 16-QAM signal at 2.4 GHz and 28 GHz at EVM
of 12.5% at the optical BtB and after 20 km SSMF transmission.

126
Z. Zhang et al. Optical Fiber Technology 38 (2017) 123–129

Fig. 8. The EVMs of 16-QAM signal at 60 GHz, 16-QAM signal at 28 GHz and 16-QAM signal at 2.4 GHz at the optical BtB and after 20 km SSMF transmission at the received optical
power of −20 dBm to −10 dBm. Insets: the constellation diagrams for 16-QAM signal at 60 GHz, 16-QAM signal at 28 GHz and 16-QAM signal at 2.4 GHz at EVM of 12.5% at the optical
BtB and after 20 km SSMF transmission.

Table 1 When K1=K2=1, K3=0, both the fundamental tone for seamless
The received sensitivity of RF signals at the optical BtB and after 20 km SSMF trans- coverage and supplementary tone for temporary high data rate re-
mission at different switch cases.
quirements are delivered, and the output photocurrent I2(t) can be re-
The Received Sensitivity Power Penalty presented as

BtB Case 20 km SSMF 1 πV1 (t ) 2 πV2 (t ) 2

I2 (t ) ≈ μA2 α 2exp(−γz )[ 2 + ( Vπ
) +( Vπ
)]
First Case 2.4 GHz 16-QAM −24.4 dBm −24.4 dBm < 0.1 dBm
Second Case 2.4 GHz 16-QAM
28 GHz 16-QAM
−20.4 dBm
−18.2 dBm
−20.2 dBm
−18.0 dBm
0.2 dBm
0.2 dBm
+ 2 μA2 α 2exp(−γz ) { πV1 (t )
Vπ
cos[ω1 t + π /4 + θ1 (t ) + β (ωc ) z

Third Case 2.4 GHz 16-QAM −18.6 dBm −18.4 dBm 0.2 dBm −β (ωc + ω1) z ]
28 GHz 16-QAM −16.1 dBm −16.1 dBm < 0.1 dBm πV2 (t )
+ cos[ω2 t + π /4 + θ2 (t ) + β (ωc ) z−β (ωc + ω2) z ]
60 GHz 16-QAM −14.3 dBm −13.5 dBm 0.8 dBm Vπ
V1 (t ) V2 (t )
Fourth Case 28 GHz 16-QAM −16.7 dBm −16.7 dBm < 0.1 dBm + cos[(ω2−ω1) t + θ2 (t )−θ1 (t )−β (ωc + ω2) z
Vπ2
60 GHz 16-QAM −15.8 dBm −15.5 dBm 0.3 dBm
+ β (ωc + ω1) z ] } (7)
different switch cases for supporting different service patterns.
According to Eq. (5), when K1 = 1, K2 = K3 = 0, only the funda- When K1 = K2 = K3 = 1, all the three tones work, meeting seam-
mental tone for wide-area seamless coverage is transmitted and the less coverage and temporary high data rate requirements as well as
output photocurrent I1(t) can be represented as ultrahigh data rate services in hotspot areas, and the output photo-
current I3(t) can be represented as
2
1 ⎛ πV1 (t ) ⎞ ⎤
I1 (t ) ≈ μA2 α 2exp(−γz ) ⎡
⎢2 +
⎜ ⎟
⎥
⎣ ⎝ Vπ ⎠ ⎦
πV (t )
+ 2 μA2 α 2 1 exp(−γz )cos[ω1 t + π /4 + θ1 (t ) + β (ωc ) z
Vπ
−β (ωc + ω1) z ]. (6)

Fig. 9. (a) The EVMs of 16-QAM signal at 2.4 GHz at dif-

ferent switch cases at the optical BtB and after 20 km SSMF
transmission. (b) The EVMs of 16-QAM signal at 28 GHz at
the optical BtB and after 20 km SSMF transmission.

127
Z. Zhang et al.
Fig. 11. The EVM of 16-QAM MMW signal at 60 GHz transmitted to a further RRU over a
10 km SSMF.
πV (t ) 2 πV (t ) 2
I3 (t ) ≈ μA2 α 2exp(−γz ) ⎡ 2 + V1
⎣ π
1
( + V2 ) (
π )
+ ( V3 )2⎤
π ⎦
πV (t )
π
+ 2 μA2 α 2 V exp(−γz ){V1 (t )cos[ω1 t + π /4 + θ1 (t ) + β (ωc ) z
π
−β (ωc + ω1) z ]
+ V2 (t )cos[ω2 t + π /4 + θ2 (t ) + β (ωc ) z−β (ωc + ω2) z ]
+ V3 (t )cos[ω3 t + π /4 + θ3 (t ) + β (ωc ) z−β (ωc + ω3) z ]}
π2
+ 2μA2 α 2 exp(−γz )
Vπ2
× {V1 (t ) V2 (t )cos[(ω2−ω1) t + θ2 (t )−θ1 (t )−β (ωc + ω2) z
+ β (ωc + ω1) z ]
+ V1 (t ) V3 (t )cos[(ω3−ω1) t + θ3 (t )−θ1 (t )−β (ωc + ω3) z
+ β (ωc + ω1) z ]
+ V1 (t ) V3 (t )cos[(ω3−ω1) t + θ3 (t )−θ1 (t )−β (ωc + ω3) z
+ β (ωc + ω1) z ]}
(8)
From Eq. (6)–(8), we can observe that the RF signals from the BBU
can be recovered back successfully in the RRU. However, the beat in-
terferences exist in the latter two cases. In Eq. (7), there is an inter-
ference term at ω2−ω1 and there are three interference tones at
ω2 − ω1, ω3 − ω1 and ω3 − ω2 in Eq. (8). If we design the spectrum
configuration properly to avoid the overlapping of the desired signal
and the interference tones, the distortion from the interferences can be
eliminated by filtering in electrical domain. In the actually system, the
RF signals from the BBU can be recovered back successfully in the RRU
since all the interference terms have lower magnitudes.
In addition, the MMW signal at ω3 can be sequentially transmitted
over an SSMF to a further RRU possibly working as supplementary to
support the plug and play flexible networking in the hotspot areas. In
the RRU, an interleaver (IL) can be used to extract the center optical
carrier and the subcarrier with the frequency spacing of ω3 from center
optical carrier and then the newly generated optical MMW signal is
transmitted to the further RRU over a 10 km SSMF. To feed multiple
further RRUs, an optical amplifier and a power splitter with the ratio,
128
Optical Fiber Technology 38 (2017) 123–129
Fig. 10. The simulation setup of the 60 GHz optical MMW signal can
be sequentially transmitted to a further RRU. BBU: baseband unit;
RRU: remote radio unit; SSMF: standard single mode fiber; ATT: op-
tical attenuator; PD: photo detector; BPF: band pass filter; LO: local
oscillator; EA: electrical amplifier; IL: interleaver; OA: optical ampli-
fier; Rx: optical receiver.
such as 1:16, are used in our link. At the optical receiver, the optical
signal is directly detected by a high speed PD to get the MMW signal at
ω3.
4. Simulation and results
To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed analog MFH archi-
tecture scheme, an MFH link is built on the simulation platform, as
shown in Fig. 3. The optical carrier from a narrow-linewidth continuous
wave laser diode (CWLD) at the frequency of 193.1 THz with optical
power of 8 dBm and linewidth of 0.1 MHz is modulated by RF signals
via an MZM with switching voltage of 4 V and insert loss of 5 dB. The
MZM is DC biased at 2 V, the RF modulating electrical signals for the
two electrodes have phase difference of 90° and magnitudes lower than
1.75 V. In our simulation, the RF signal includes three tones: 16-QAM
signal with data rate at 100Mbps at 2.4 GHz and power of 36 dBm, 16-
QAM signal with data rate at 1 Gbps at 28 GHz and power of 43 dBm
and 16-QAM signal with data rate at 10Gbps at 60 GHz and power of
43 dBm. The three data streams carried by the RF signals are mapped
from different pseudo-random binary sequences with the word length of
212−1. A selective switch is used to choose the transmitted RF signals,
in which the first case allows 16-QAM signal at 2.4 GHz only, the
second case both the 16-QAM signal at 2.4 GHz and 16-QAM signal at
28 GHz are transmitted, and all the three RF signals are transmitted in
the third case. Then, the modulated optical signal is filtered out by an
optical BPF with central frequency of 193.135 THz and bandwidth of
70 GHz for suppressing the other higher-order sidebands to form the
SSB optical MMW signal. The spectra of the generated optical signals in
the BBU are shown in Fig. 4 at different switch cases. Then the optical
MMW signal is transmitted over the 20 km SSMF with the attenuation
coefficient of 0.2 dB/km and chromatic dispersion of 16.75 ps/nm·km.
In the RRU, the optical signal, firstly attenuated by a tunable optical
attenuator to adjust the optical power, is directly detected by a high
speed PIN PD with responsivity of 1 mA/mW to recover the transmitted
RF signals. The spectra of the photocurrent output from the PD are
shown in Fig. 5(a), (b) and (c) at the three cases. It can be seen that the
three desired RF tones are domain and the interference tones have little
magnitude and so small degradation on the desired RF tones. According
to the client requirements, in the RRU, the RF signals can be extracted
and we can radiate all the three RF signals, two RF signals or only one
RF signal to users wirelessly. Here, the RF signals are coherently de-
modulated by the local oscillators (LOs) respectively without wireless
propagation since what we are interested in is the transmission per-
formance of the multi-RF signals in the optical domain.
To check the transmission performance of these RF signals over an
SSMF, the EVMs of the three data streams carried by the received RF
signals are calculated based on the simulation results at optical BtB case
and after 20 km fiber transmission, as shown in Figs. 6–8. When the RF
modulating electrical signals include all the three bands (60 GHz,
28 GHz and 2.4 GHz), or two bands (28 GHz and 2.4 GHz) or only 16-
QAM signal at 2.4 GHz, the EVM curves of the received RF signals after
demodulation are shown in Fig. 8, Figs. 7 and 6, respectively. We can
observe that the EVM curves gradually increase with the reduction of
the received optical power. The received sensitivities and power pe-
nalties at the EVM of 12.5% at different switch cases for the optical BtB
Z. Zhang et al.
case and after 20 km SSMF transmission are listed in Table 1.
From Table 1, we can find that the received sensitivity for the same
RF signal at different switch cases shows significant difference such as
the received sensitivity of the RF signal at 2.4 GHz gradually drops
when the RF signals at higher frequencies are included, as shown in
Fig. 9(a). In order to further observe the interactions among different
RF tones, the lightwave is modulated by the RF signals at 28 GHz and
60 GHz, here we call it the fourth switch case (K1 = 0, K2 = K3 = 1).
The EVM curves of the RF signal at 28 GHz after demodulation at dif-
ferent switch cases are shown in Fig. 9(b). The received sensitivity for
the RF signal at 28 GHz at the EVM of 12.5% is −15.4 dBm at the
optical BtB case and −15.1 dBm after 20 km SSMF transmission with
the power penalty of 0.3 dBm. It can be seen that the received sensi-
tivity for the RF signal at 28 GHz at the fourth case is a little higher than
that of the third case after 20 km SSMF transmission. According to
above analysis, we can see that although the HF signals included lead to
the degradation of the LF signals, the LF signals can still maintain a
good performance as they are transmitted over fiber. On the contrary,
the LF signals included have little influence on the HF signals.
In addition, the 60 GHz optical MMW signal can be sequentially
transmitted over an SSMF to a further RRU working as a supplementary
to support the plug and play flexible networking in the hotspot areas. As
shown in Fig. 10, in the RRU, an interleaver can be used to extract the
center optical carrier and the subcarrier with the frequency spacing of
60 GHz from center optical carrier and then the modified optical MMW
signal is transmitted to the further RRU over a 10-km SSMF. To feed
multiple further RRUs, an optical amplifier with gain of 20 dB and noise
figure of 4 dB is used in our simulation and an optical attenuator with
24 dB is used to emulate the power splitter loss with the split ratio of
1:16. At the optical receiver, the optical signal is directly detected by a
high speed PIN PD to get the MMW signal at 60 GHz. Then, this MMW
signal is coherently demodulated by the LO without wireless propaga-
tion and the EVM curve is shown in Fig. 11. The receiver sensitivity for
the 60 GHz 16-QAM signal after 10 km SSMF transmission at EVM of
12.5% is -13.7 dBm. We can observe that the transmission performance
can be guaranteed when the 60 GHz optical MMW signal is sequentially
transmitted to a further RRU.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, a novel analog MFH architecture which can provide
different services for users by using different frequencies according to
the client rate requirements is proposed. The three RF signals show
good performance after 20 km SSMF transmission and the power pe-
nalties at EVM of 12.5% for different RF signals at different cases are
lower than 1 dBm. This link, transmitting LF signal as well as HF sig-
nals, can be applied in LF and HF hybrid networking, supporting the
129
Optical Fiber Technology 38 (2017) 123–129
conventional seamless telecommunication networks and emerging
small cellular networks. The MMW signal at 60 GHz can be sequentially
transmitted over a 10-km SSMF which serves multiple further RRUs
working for realizing the future plug and play flexible networking in the
hotspot areas.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (NSFC, Grant: 61690195, 61471065).
References
[1] J. Kang, O. Simeone, S. Shamai, Fronthaul compression and precoding design for C-
RANs over ergodic fading channels, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 65 (7) (2016)
5022–5032.
[2] L. Giorgi, G. Bruno, J. Nijhof, P.J. Urban, Subcarrier multiplexing RF plans for
analog radio over fiber in heterogeneous networks, J. Lightave Technol. 34 (16)
(2016) 3859–3866.
[3] G. Vall-Llosera, B Dortschy, P. Urban, Small cell strategy: meeting the indoor
challenge, in: Conf. Rec. 2014 IEEE Int. Conf. Communications, pp. 392–396.
[4] A. Pizzinat, P. Chanclou, F. Saliou, T. Diallo, Things you should know about fron-
thaul, J. Lightwave Technol. 33 (5) (2015) 1077–1083.
[5] J. He, X. Wen, M. Chen, L. Chen, J. Su, Full-duplex multiband orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing ultra-wideband over fiber system, Opt. Eng. 54 (1) (2015)
016101.
[6] Y. E. Chenhui, X. Hu, X. Huang, Q. Chang, X. Sun, Z. Gao, S. Xiao, K. Zhang, A first
demonstration of a PON-based analog fronthaul solution supporting 120 20MHz
LTE-A signals for future Het-Net radio access, in: 2015 Asia Communications and
Photonics Conf., paper ASu3E.2.
[7] P. Dat, A. Kanno, N. Yamamoto, T. Kawanishi, Full-duplex transmission of LTE-A
carrier aggregation signal over a bidirectional seamless fiber-millimeter-wave
system, J. Lightwave Technol. 34 (15) (2015) 691–700.
[8] J. Ma, Full-duplex radio over fiber link with colorless source-free base station based
on single sideband optical mm-wave signal with polarization rotated optical carrier,
Opt. Fiber Technol. 30 (2016) 163–166.
[9] J. Zhang, M. Xu, J. Wang, F. Lu, L. Cheng, M. Zhu, I. Khalil, J. Yu, G. Chang, Carrier
aggregation for MMW inter-RAT and intra-RAT in next generation heterogeneous
mobile data network based on optical domain band mapping, in: 2015 Proc. Eur.
Conf. Opt. Communication, paper We.4.4.5.
[10] X. Li, J. Xiao, F. Li, Y. Xu, L. Chen, J. Yu, Large capacity optical wireless signal
delivery at W-band: OFDM or single carrier?, in: 2016 Opt. Fiber Communication
Conf. Optical Society of America, paper TU2B.6.
[11] H. Wang, W. Hong, J. Chen, B. Sun, X. Peng, IEEE 802.11aj (45GHz): a new very
high throughput millimeter-wave WLAN system, Chin. Commun. 11 (6) (2014)
51–62.
[12] W.C. Cheng, T.H. Liu, M.L. Hsu, Z.M. Tsai, 15 GHz propagation channel measure-
ment at a university campus for the 5G spectrum, in: 2015 Asia-Pacific Microwave
Conf., vol. 2, pp. 1-3.
[13] N.J. Gomes, P. Assimakopoulos, M.K. Al-Hares, U. Habib, S. Noor, The new flexible
mobile fronthaul: digital or analog, or both?, in: 2016 Int. Conf. on Transparent
Optical Networks, pp. 1–4.
[14] P.T. Dat, A. Kanno, T. Kawanishi, Low-latency fiber-wireless bridge for flexible
fronthauling in future mobile networks, in: 2015 European Microwave Conf., pp.
1156–1159.
[15] White Paper on 5G Wireless Technology Architecture [online]. Available: http://
www.imt-2020.cn/.