IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO.
11, JUNE 1, 2021
Toward 6G Internet of Things and the Convergence
With RoF System
Na Chen , Member, IEEE, and Minoru Okada, Member, IEEE
Abstract—The Internet of Things (IoT) has been a promising
communication paradigm that involves sensors, microcontrollers,
and transceivers for an efficient communication and computa-
tion system. The infrastructure and the applications shall enable
and improve the intelligent management of our city service,
workspace, and daily life. This article aims at the future 6G
vision of IoT, and discusses the convergence with the Radio-over-
Fiber (RoF) system. Comparing with the IoT services included in
the 5G deployment, 6G IoT exploits high-density heterogeneous
devices involving extremely high capacity, supporting much more
robust system architecture and artificial intelligence (AI)-based
smart algorithms. The RoF is one of the most promising enablers
for the outstanding characters of flexibility and efficiency of
6G IoT systems. This article first introduces the IoT envolution
roadmap from 5G toward 6G and the potency of optic fiber and
RoF technologies. Then, we present the rapidly expanding RoF
market and compatible technologies related to IoT-RoF conver-
gence with the discussion on the current outstanding works in
multiple dimensions. Finally, we investigate the challenges ahead
for the future RoF supported 6G IoT system and the emerging
technology solutions.
Index Terms—6G, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things
(IoT), Radio over Fiber (RoF).
I. I NTRODUCTION
Y CONNECTING heterogeneous devices seamlessly, the
B Internet of Things (IoT) has been a promising infras-
tructure to satisfy the needs of connecting people, devices,
and services. In the modern communication era, the require-
ment is growing dramatically for reliable IoT systems that
deal with higher levels of volume density, smart, and flex-
ible applications. The IoT vision can be achieved via sen-
sors interfaced with computers, at reduced costs, enhanced
usability, and improved efficiency [1], [2]. Since the defi-
nition by the international telecommunication union (ITU)
in the recommendation of [3], IoT technology has revo-
lutionized the style of our daily life. Typical applications
include smart city, augmented reality (AR), and industrial
IoT (IIoT).
The IoT has been relying on the cellular network since
long-term evolution (LTE) standards were introduced [4], then
it is enhanced as specific scenarios in 5G. According to
the prediction by Ericsson [5], there will be 5 billion IoT
Manuscript received October 28, 2020; accepted December 15, 2020. Date
of publication December 28, 2020; date of current version May 21, 2021.
(Corresponding author: Na Chen.)
The authors are with the Graduate School of Science and Technology,
Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Ikoma 630-0192, Japan (e-mail:
chenna@is.naist.jp).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JIOT.2020.3047613
2327-4662 
c 2020 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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8719
devices by 2025 connected via the 3rd generation partnership
project (3GPP) mobile access technologies. The deployment
of 5G new radio (NR) supports the exponential traffic growth
by defining three types of connectivity: 1) enhanced mobile
broadband (eMBB); 2) massive machine-type communica-
tion (mMTC); and 3) ultrareliable low-latency communication
(URLLC). These concepts exceed the limitation of conven-
tional mobile communication standards and enable the service
requirements on connecting machines [6].
The future 6G system will be investigated and standard-
ized during the next few years, enabling data rate 100–1000
times faster than 5G services [7]. Besides, there are the follow-
ing requirements and technologies [8]: 1) new man–machine
interfaces; 2) universal computation distribution; 3) data fusion
and mixed reality; 4) precision sensing and controlling; and
5) massive and scalable connectivity. In the 6G network, new
use cases may occur, such as telepresence, zero energy devices,
swarms of robots, biosensors, and some applications that may
still be unknown nowadays.
There will be a significant revolution in the technologies
about to be applied in 6G IoT systems. The primary require-
ment can be fulfilled by Radio over Fiber (RoF), which
is promising to provide the system with a large capacity,
low attenuation, and strong ability of anti-electromagnetic
interference. The network will be diverse as centralized
or distributed to enable cloud computing, fog computing,
edge computing, and other advanced computing architectures.
The network devices will be evolved to adapt to multiple
scenarios as either general programmable equipment with
strong adaptivity or developing independent computation abil-
ity. Machine-area network and robot-area network will be
involved, connecting the parts of a machine or robot. More
humanized design will be applied, such as the interactive
man–machine interface and 3-D projection. Energy efficiency
will be considered during implementation to realize low-power
consumption. Potential batteryless or flexible charging meth-
ods will occur, such as wireless power transfer or wireless
energy harvesting technologies.
The remainder of this article is organized as follows.
Section II presents the typical use cases, 5G definition of
IoT systems, and expectations for 6G IoT systems. Section III
presents the solutions related to RoF converged IoT systems,
including the market analysis, the summary of the RoF related
schemes, and the compatible vital technologies. Section IV
discusses the future challenges for the 6G IoT converged with
RoF systems. Finally, we draw conclusions in Section V.
Related abbreviations are listed in the Appendix.
8720
Fig. 1. Typical use cases of 6G IoT.
II. T OWARD 6G I OT
This section starts from the typical use cases, some of which
have been supported or partially supported by 5G, and are
possible to be enrolled and further improved in future 6G
scenarios [9].
A. Use Cases
We summarize six typical use cases, including smart
home, satellite–terrestrial-integrated communication, smart
city, underwater communication, hospital, and industry, as
shown in Fig. 1.
1) Smart Home: The smart home scenario usually con-
sists of home area network (HAN) supported by fiber to the
home (FTTH) [15] to provide the connection of smart home
devices. Smart home includes a broad set of services, such as
the environment and security monitor, personal assistant, home
robots, and entertainment (such as toys and games) [10], [11].
Such applications are becoming more and more complex,
and with more extensive scale and enormous bandwidth
occupation, as the connected devices become diverse, the
transmitted data tend to become of large volume and het-
erogeneity [12]. Besides cellular connection, supplementary
links involve multiple technologies [13], such as Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth [14].
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IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 11, JUNE 1, 2021
2) Satellite–Terrestrial-Integrated Communication: 6G
IoT systems consider the satellite–terrestrial-integrated
communication scheme to fulfill a greater demand for access
with higher flexibility and broader area [16]. Examples
of such a category of use cases include remote alarms,
geofencing, asset tracking, and environment monitor-
ing. Devices can set up a connection with the dedicated
terrestrial–satellite terminal (TST) instead of the conven-
tional base station (BS) [17]. Because of the integration
of terrestrial and satellite connectivity, the TST supports
links over frequency ranging from very high frequency
(VHF) to Ka-band [18], [19], serving various devices with
different bandwidth. The recent work considers relay by
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to further flexibly enhance
the coverage [20]–[23], cognitive access [24], and satellite
constellation [25].
3) Smart City: The smart city market is estimated at a scale
of hundreds of billion dollars [26], [27]. Considered by 6G
IoT, there are multiple types of smart city services and plenty
of applications are involved. The following is a synoptic view
of some typical scenarios.
1) Smart Utilities: City utilities apply suitable monitors and
controllers for the electric grid, water quality, gas sup-
ply, public lighting, waste management, and other city
service maintenance aspects. The monitored data can be
CHEN AND OKADA: TOWARD 6G INTERNET OF THINGS AND CONVERGENCE WITH RoF SYSTEM
exploited to optimize the system for stable execution and
resource saving [28], [29].
2) Smart Environment: There are various environmental
monitoring types, especially in the urban area, including
air pollution index, temperature measurement, noise con-
trol, and extreme weather alert. The mass volume of data
can be collected and visualized to the public and utilized
for long-term analysis and scientific research [30].
3) Smart Traffic: Camera-based traffic monitoring, global
positioning system (GPS) navigation, and congestion
detection have been applied in many cities world-
wide. Applications on self-driving and vehicle to vehicle
(V2V) communication are under rapid development
with zero-latency transmission links and intelligent algo-
rithms. These services will make the city traffic more
convenient, less congestion, and cause less pollution to
the environment [31], [32].
4) Smart Building: For public buildings, such as schools,
administration offices, and museums, the smart building
system senses and controls the indoor environment, such
as illumination, temperature, and humidity, to maintain
comfort levels. Meanwhile, the monitor and alert system
can maintain the security of the building from possible
invasion [33].
4) Underwater Communication: Underwater communica-
tion is expected to be under the coverage of the 6G era for the
first time. Main applications include the detection of tsunamis,
monitoring of animal health, and surveying shipwrecks. Due
to the significant attenuation caused by oceanic environments,
the radio-frequency (RF) communication links among crew-
less vehicles, underwater sensors, and research ships suffer
from limited transmission distance. So far, multiple frequency
bands are utilized for sonar, radio, and optical communication
to adapt to the different underwater scenarios [34].
5) Hospital: The smart hospital system requires com-
prehensive, integrated information to manage the operation,
including medical, administration, and finance. The monitor
for patients requires multiple styles of wearable health sensors.
Heterogeneous data shall be collected and analyzed accord-
ing to professional knowledge and provide the target patients
proper medical advice [35], [36].
6) Industry: In the manufacturing workspace, Industry 4.0
IoT systems collect and store the big data in cloud servers
and analyze to achieve higher efficiency and profit. The
ongoing Industry 5.0 [37] faces more challenges at human–
machine interaction (HMI) and the automation of intelligent
robots. The deep integration with artificial intelligence (AI)
and 6G accelerates the industrial chain to an unprecedented
level [38], [39].
Because of the diversity of use cases, the system requires a
strong connection wired and wirelessly for the high-capacity
backbone network and flexible access. The wireless links
occupy different spectrum, considering the heterogeneous
devices and different applications. Besides electrical cable,
optical fiber is highly relied on to support frequency bands
from megahertz to terahertz, with a high speed and low latency.
The 6G IoT system is sustainable for high-accuracy local-
ization and sensing, which are necessary for most of the above
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8721
Fig. 2. Estimation of the global traffic during 2020–2030.
use cases. Especially, centimeter-level precision is expected in
future 6G-based sensing systems. For object sensing, the accu-
racy measured by the false/missing alarm probabilities and
estimation error will be limited to an adequately characterized
threshold to maintain the application scenarios. The collection
of sufficient knowledge and big data enhances the capability of
AI-based system management and control, with little or zero
manual intervention, implementing reliable automation. The
6G system will offer a better enrollment of the IoT devices,
as the 5G IoT has provided a solid foundation.
B. 5G IoT
Toward the requirement of connection and interaction
among billions of devices in the modern IoT systems, inter-
national mobile telecommunications-2020 (IMT-2020) for 5G
has included the support on the three core services, including
eMBB, mMTC, and URLLC [40], [41].
Compared with previous generations of mobile communica-
tion systems, URLLC and eMBB are two critical aspects of the
novelty of 5G standardization. Depending on the scenario, IoT
may fit any of the three service types, referred to as broadband
IoT, massive IoT, and critical IoT, respectively, [42].
1) Broadband IoT: As is shown in Fig. 2 [52], the global
traffic shows a rapid growth momentum during the next
decade. For services, such as multimedia service, AR, virtual
reality (VR), and other extensive data volume services, there
is a critical need as high as terabytes per second of data pro-
cessing and gigabytes of spectrum bandwidth. Regularly, the
system also needs to support low latency and limited power
consumption to maintain long battery life and be ecofriendly.
In such a segment, LTE systems have considered the services.
Furthermore, in 5G NR, the supported throughput and data
rate increases substantially to support the anticipated increas-
ing demands of 34% of cellular IoT connections by the end
of 2025.
2) Massive IoT: Massive IoT is a novel scenario proposed
in 5G for the typical low throughput IoT with massive connec-
tions [5]. As is commonly understood, the devices are of low
complexity and cost, covering a wide area of use cases, requir-
ing sporadic access, and transmitting with small data payloads,
such as environmental sensing and wearable health monitor-
ing. To deal with the random and sporadic access behavior,
the system utilizes proper access protocol and load balanc-
ing strategy. Due to the narrow bandwidth, such services can
8722 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 11, JUNE 1, 2021

TABLE I
S TUDIES ON 5G I OT S YSTEMS

TABLE II
F REQUENCY R ESOURCES AVAILABLE FOR I OT [57]

continue deploying the available frequency bands. Machine
learning (ML) and big data technologies can realize the man-
agement of the large number of devices accessing and a large
volume of collected data processing without high operating
expenses (OPEX).
3) Critical IoT: Critical IoT guarantees data delivery with
sufficient reliability and low delay for some time-critical
scenarios, such as self-driving, drone controlling, and cloud
gaming. 5G NR provides critical communication capability for
real-time coordination among cloud and terminal equipment.
Key technologies include massive MIMO and multiconnectiv-
ity, also referred to as interface diversity [53].
Table I summarizes the outstanding works on the three ser-
vice types. In practical scenarios, the above three aspects are
not mutually exclusive from each other. Services can cover one
or more aspects. Supported by the 5G cellular network, mas-
sive energy-efficient devices are accessed to the core network,
forming an mMTC system, such as the smart grid, environment
monitoring, and personal health management [54]. Comparing
with conventional cellular subscribers, the typical data trans-
mission by the IoT devices is sparse and with relatively low
data load, and may accumulate considerable data volume after
a relatively long work cycle.
Comparing with conventional IoT, these diverse applica-
tion scenarios require specific functions [55], such as lower
latency and higher throughput. Thus, the 5G system develops
network slicing technology to fulfill the massive and scalable
connectivity for different scenarios [56].
Besides 5G, some devices are connected via open stan-
dard as cognitive IoT by communication at unlicensed
frequency bands, standardized by IEEE 802.15.x and 802.11.
As is shown in Table II, the licensed band is quite lim-
ited, but the unlicensed band is still much more unex-
plored. For wide-area IoT, solution providers, such as Sigfox
and LoRa, support the physical domain outside the range
of small area IoT technologies. Some previous existing
3GPP standards include LTE for machine-to-machine (M2M),
narrow-band IoT (NB-IoT), and extended coverage GSM for
IoT (EC-GSM-IoT).
RoF has arisen since the 4G decade. In the 5G system,
RoF shows capability for transmitting 5G mmWave orthogonal
frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) signal at a multi-
Gbps rate, which will be discussed in Section III. Enhanced by
optical fiber, 5G is a startup generation for supporting IoT and
AI, and 6G will allow a further promotion for an intelligent
IoT system.

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CHEN AND OKADA: TOWARD 6G INTERNET OF THINGS AND CONVERGENCE WITH RoF SYSTEM 8723

TABLE III
C OMPARISON B ETWEEN 5G AND 6G

TABLE IV
S TUDIES ON P OSSIBLE 6G I OT S OLUTIONS

C. 6G Expectation
Comparing with the 4G system, the 5G architecture has
achieved significant improvement milestones on performance.
Based on the current progress, the 6G system will take
another step forward in data rate, latency, reliability, mobil-
ity, and plenty of key performance indicators (KPIs), as
shown in Table III. The 6G network architecture has advanced
features, such as space-air-terrestrial-sea integrated (SATSI),
ML utilization, high frequency with wideband, and ultra-
dense heterogeneous network (HetNet) structure, to support
extremely dense connectivity, large-volume data transmission,
low latency, flexible access, green energy consumption, and
high level of privacy [58].
As the 5G system has formally contained IoT within its
scenarios, 6G will adequately support the fusion of different
devices. To cope with the challenges brought by the large-
scale and diverse requirements of the system, we summarize
some ideas and solutions for 6G IoT in Table IV. As micro-
electronic technology develops, smartphones have developed
more applications, and there will be more smart devices. The
IoT will include more devices and become the Internet of
Everything (IoE) in the near future. Of course, this process will
encounter severe problems and challenges regarding capac-
ity, densification, dynamics of the system, and high-efficient
resource management.
As the current work suggests, the 6G IoT will become more
intelligent and achieve the system targets. The utilization of
AI technologies helps realize smart network recognition, flex-
ible network operation, optimized network management, and
automatic maintenance [59], [60]. For the 6G IoT applications
that generate big data, AI technologies, such as ML, train the
models with big data, then achieve satisfactory performance.
There are proper algorithms that can be trained with less or no
data for other dramatically dynamic or with fewer preknowl-
edge scenarios. AI can be performed at cloud end, network
edge, or even on-device, to adapt to different applications.
Meanwhile, multilevel AI can be deployed for deep mining of
the collected knowledge and acquire a more intelligent model.

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8724
Fig. 3. Convergence of RoF and 6G IoT.
Thus, the connection between the BSs and the backbone
network carries a heavy load that includes transmission data,
training data for AI algorithms, and signaling data that controls
the link. The fronthaul links carry the downlink data and com-
mands, while the backhaul links shall transmit the collected
data and information for AI training from the dense and het-
erogeneous devices. To bear such capacity requirement and
the critical latency demand, defined in ITU-T G series [70],
[71], RoF is one of the promising solutions for multiple types
of radio communications, including the service of IoT.
III. C ONVERGENCE W ITH RO F
For IoT in 6G, the system’s capability is rapidly improv-
ing, adopting the connection with high-capacity devices. Thus,
there is a rising demand for RoF-based solutions, which is
primarily driven by the emergence of high bandwidth services
and the large number of subscribers connected.
As shown in Fig. 3, RoF provides an effective solution
for RF signal transmission. Generated at the central office
(CO) and carried by the optical carrier, signals are transmitted
through optical fiber networks at a low loss level toward the
remote radio heads (RRHs). RoF conveys wireless signals via
the optical carrier. In the optical fronthaul network, the opti-
cal link takes advantage of low attenuation below 0.2 dB/km
and massive bandwidth. RoF offers an option of a central-
ized network that is easy to upgrade and maintain, with high
efficiency on resource management and sharing [72].
A. Market and Opportunities
Applied for telecommunications, broadcasting, navigation,
and M2M communication, RoF has attracted much attention
for decades since 4G and showed a favorable development
prospect. According to the forecast [73], it is expected that the
RoF market grows 10.97% from 2018 to 2023, from $336.3
million (2018) to $556.1 million (2023). Companies, includ-
ing II-VI, HUBER+SUHNER, Seikoh Giken, and Corning,
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IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 11, JUNE 1, 2021
have made great efforts in designing and developing innovative
products.
With the increasing demand for high rate and connectivity,
RoF is deployed widely for both consumer and industrial sides.
As an example, the IIoT is also expected to be promoted by
RoF [74]. Applications include material and product monitor-
ing, process controlling, and integration with optical sensors.
The RoF markets are mainly driven by North America, along
with rapidly growing markets in Europe, Asia–Pacific, and
Latin America. Meanwhile, the middle east and Africa are
in the developing phase of broadband services, which show
clear growth potential. The government projects and infras-
tructure developments for upgrading networks also drive the
RoF applications, such as fiber to the x (FTTx), the variants of
fiber optic access infrastructure. FTTx shows growing oppor-
tunities for the last mile data transmission, such as FTTH,
fiber to the node (FTTN), fiber to the exchange (FTTE), fiber
to the building (FTTB), and fiber to the zone (FTTZ).
The growth of the RoF market is propelled by the cur-
rent developed system, such as LTE/LTE-advanced, and the
up-to-date 5G. Network architectures that apply fiber have
great potential to accommodate high-speed communication
for 5G and beyond, producing the possibilities for advanced
IoT applications with high spectrum efficiency and high
bandwidth.
RoF is capable of typical frequency bands, including L, S,
C, X, Ku, and Ka, for terrestrial, marine, and satellite com-
munication. As 5G has forayed into sub-6 GHz and mmWave
bands, 6G is envisaged to function at hundreds of Gbps. Thus,
the THz spectrum, which is between microwave and infrared,
will be occupied. The investments for data centers and big
data technologies keep rising, and the growing need for large
volume data transmission will maintain during the next years.
Comparing with the copper cable, the optic fiber is safer and
lightweighted, transmitting higher bandwidth with lower atten-
uation without affected by RF interferences. Fibers are more
expensive than copper cables. The system may cost more at
CHEN AND OKADA: TOWARD 6G INTERNET OF THINGS AND CONVERGENCE WITH RoF SYSTEM
TABLE V
T YPICAL A PPLICATIONS OF RO F FOR M OBILE C OMMUNICATION S YSTEMS
the first construction. However, the durability of optical fiber is
comparable with copper, as the jacketing material strengthens
the fiber to get rid of frequent maintenance.
As summarized in Table V, since the 4G network, RoF
has been supporting broadband wireless communication in a
highly scalable and effective manner and will continue for 6G
systems. RoF provides various options for network employ-
ment. A-RoF is highly spectrally efficient, power efficient, and
less complicated. However, it is sensitive to intermodulation
distortion caused by the nonlinearity effect of the components.
D-RoF mitigates the nonlinear issue with higher complexity
and higher power consumption. Thus, A-RoF performs better
for a short transmission distance, while D-RoF can bear long-
distance transmission with relatively low distortion. To obtain
the advantages of both A-RoF and D-RoF, a hybrid scheme,
named sigma delta modulated signal over fiber (SDoF), can
transmit high bandwidth signals at high quality with low
complexity [92].
Along with RoF, there are other concepts or schemes regard-
ing optic-related communication. For example, the concept
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8725
of fiber-wireless (Fi-Wi) includes RoF and radio-and-fiber
(R&F). Comparing with R&F, RoF shows higher performance
for fast-moving users, fronthaul, C-RAN, and implementation
with lower weight and complexity. Meanwhile, RoF can also
cooperate with optical wireless communication, such as free-
space optical (FSO) systems [88], which transmit data with
light propagating in free space wirelessly.
B. Compatible Technologies
As RoF has been widely applied in mobile communications
shown in Table V, it can be converged with current and future
IoT systems, achieving a high-performance gain. Outstanding
schemes for IoT converged with RoF with multiple technolo-
gies utilization are summarized in Table VI, and we summarize
multiple-related technologies supported by RoF.
1) C-RAN: C-RAN is a promising solution for ultradense
mm-wave networks, whose centralized style enables improved
radio coordination and energy efficiency [98]. RoF system is
fully aligned with the C-RAN architecture, with demanding
8726
TABLE VI
I OT C ONVERGED W ITH RO F AND R ELATED T ECHNOLOGIES
processing operations of the conventional BSs moved into the
baseband unit (BBU) at the CO, and the simplified RRHs
converting RoF signal to radio waves. For 5G systems, the
centralized BBU and RRHs can be connected via D-RoF
links with standardized protocols, such as the CPRI [99]. For
the next-generation networks such as 6G, the CPRI protocol
may not be sufficient. So the enhanced CPRI (eCPRI) [100]
is proposed for the next-generation fronthaul interface. For
A-RoF, some efforts have been made on the physical layer to
improve the optical spectrum efficiency [101], [102].
2) SDN: To optimize the performance of the dynamic IoT
system, SDN is a promising solution to analyze, forecast,
and adjust the system traffic. Meanwhile, SDN provides dif-
ferentiated services for variable modes by tightly coupling
and integrating the control and data planes, capable of opti-
cal networks [103]. The new paradigms of software-defined
IoT (SD-IoT) [104] achieve dynamic and automated net-
workability, which is visible, programmable, robust, scalable,
virtualized, and customizable. The SD-IoT contains the three
layers of application, control, and infrastructure, and is capable
of enhancing system flexibility and security [105]. OpenFlow
protocol enables heterogeneous equipment configuration effi-
ciently. The future generation system is expected to include
the optical routing decisions and WDM support in OpenFlow
for the future generation system [106].
3) Machine Learning: Due to the dynamic and scalar of
the 6G system, manual operation and conventional static algo-
rithms will be incapable of achieving adequate performance.
As a result, ML is motivated as one of the most promis-
ing methodologies to enable smart control by sufficient
data analysis [107], [108]. As for RoF systems, ML-based
approaches usually focus on nonlinearity caused by optical
fiber to the RF signal. ML-based equalizers are designed for
compensation and interference mitigation for signal vector
recovering [109], [110].
4) mmWave and THz Communication: As is shown in
Table II, some IoT devices are originally capable of working
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IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 11, JUNE 1, 2021
on high-frequency bands. Ranging from 30 to 300 GHz,
the mmWave band has been officially included in the 5G
system [111], especially for the spectrum below 100 GHz.
5G defines the standardized bands at sub-6, 28, and 60 GHz,
allocated diversely among countries. The sub-THz and THz
bands will operate in beyond 5G and 6G systems [112]–[114],
such as the frequency range above 100 GHz, 300 GHz, and
up to 3 THz. Thus, mmWave and THz will be licensed
bands for IoT systems and especially suitable for near-field
IoT transceivers, such as NFC sensors. To support such
a high band with large bandwidth, RoF is promising for
broadband, massive, and critical application scenarios [115].
In the RoF system, the low-frequency baseband signal is
upconverted to high-frequency mmWave signal by exploiting
Mach–Zehnder modulator’s nonlinearity, wavelength conver-
sion techniques, or the photodetector’s nonlinearity [116],
and THz signal tuning methods have been studied by [117].
Multicore fiber (MCF) and WDM can be applied for higher
efficiency [118].
5) Ultradense HetNet: To implement the multiple func-
tions and types of the devices fulfilling various demands,
the network becomes highly heterogeneous in terms of both
hardware and data transmitted [119]. For example, in the
smart home scenario, multiple sensors, such as temperature
and humility, help control the air conditioner, the preset pro-
grams control the lights to turn on and off during the day,
and the smart devices present an AR interface for searching
information online, playing games, and socializing with other
people. The 6G IoT system will utilize higher frequency, such
as THz bands [113]. With the shortened wireless transmission
distance and high-density devices, the extremely heteroge-
neous and ultradense network structure will occur, resulting
in severe resource shortage. For such a system, traffic volume
support and resource allocation are the key challenges. The
ultradense HetNet system performs capable technologies, such
as resource trading among the nodes [120], massive access
technology [121], smart handoff management [122], and small
CHEN AND OKADA: TOWARD 6G INTERNET OF THINGS AND CONVERGENCE WITH RoF SYSTEM
cell mobility management [123]. RoF provides full support for
high-speed fronthaul and backhaul traffic to the wireless access
point, and the centralized CO can analyze and provide feasi-
ble solutions to the traffic improvement, frequency, and energy
consumption problems [124].
6) Cell-Free Massive MIMO: RoF provides com-
plete support for multiple antenna access. For example,
Gordon et al. [125] proposed a distributed antenna solution
for the RoF system. For the dense network with mobility,
seamless coverage with increased large-scale and user
proximity can be implemented by cell-free massive MIMO
technology, which has been crucial in the 6G system to
improve the spectral efficiency [126]. Thus, the concept of
cells is surpassed by the idea of cell free by sharing the
neighboring antennas and free RF resources. The multi-
connectivity and multilayer hybrid access will overcome
handover failures and delays. Since the channel gains in cell-
free systems are not independent and identically distributed
(IID) anymore, the channel hardening effect is not observed.
Advanced beamforming schemes such as [127] can prevent
the self-interference caused by such effect. Meanwhile, the
beamforming scheme based on phase shifters can realize
highly directional beamforming with consideration of the fiber
nonlinearity [128]. Moreover, beamforming strategies can be
software defined for efficient and flexible communication
among multiantenna devices with AI algorithms.
C. Advantages
A typical RoF-based system shows the following
advantages.
1) Low Distortion: Transmitted by the optical fiber, the
signal suffers from less attenuation and distortion than that
when transmitted by the cable or wireless channel, especially
for high frequency, such as mmWave and THz bands. Thus,
the signal is capable of being transmitted further with fewer
repeaters and amplifiers so that the network and equipment
can be simplified. Modulators convey the signal to specific
optic carriers, according to the fiber condition and transmis-
sion requirement. There are three main wavelengths preferred
for transmission with low distortion, including 850-, 1310-,
and 1550-nm wavelengths [129], [130].
2) Large Bandwidth: The RoF system possesses the advan-
tage of Fi-Wi integration for the ultrawide bandwidth sup-
ported by fiber and mmWave/THz modern wireless commu-
nication [131]. A single-mode fiber (SMF) supports as high
as 50 THz [132] at the three main transmission band win-
dows. Such enormous bandwidth is unachievable for electronic
systems [133]. Meanwhile, subcarrier multiplexing (SCM)
technology and cognitive algorithms [134] are utilized in
analog RoF systems to increase the fiber capacity.
3) Energy Efficiency: When designing the transmission
system, energy is another consideration besides frequency.
The high data requirement and access density of the mod-
ern system are challenging for operators’ energy consumption
considerations. For typical cellular systems, the BSs occupy
70% of the total power consumption [135]. With the sim-
plified BS structure, the RoF system shows an advantage
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8727
of energy efficiency with sufficient coverage and power
consumption [136], [137].
4) Limited CAPEX: The RoF technology reduces the
system capital expenditures (CAPEX) for operating, repair-
ing, and updating [138]. At the CO side, equipment, such
as high-frequency electrooptical modulators and electronics,
consume high cost and power. The BSs are simplified due to
the shared modulators and switchers, which lead to limited
CAPEX. The centralized structure is also adaptive for sup-
porting new services and characters without dealing with the
massive number of simplified BSs. Then, this will result in
easy installation and low-cost maintenance.
5) Flexibility: RoF supports different traffic characters by
dynamic capacity allocation, enabling signal processing, such
as macrodiversity transmission and mobility monitoring. By
allocating optical wavelengths through WDM, the system can
be adaptive for the dynamic nature of traffic peak occurrence.
The capacity can be allocated to business areas during the
daytime and be reallocated to residential areas in the evening.
Meanwhile, the RoF system supports power transfer with
acceptable efficiency [139].
6) Security and Privacy: In the IoT system, there are
connected smart devices operating for multiple goals. The
data collected or processed by devices may be private
and sensitive [140], [141]. IoT systems always suffer from
security problems, such as Denial-of-Service (DOS) attacks
and targeted cyber attacks. For the reliable system design,
Zhang et al. [88] and Zou et al. [142] considered some effec-
tive tradeoff and coordination methodologies. Yang et al. [95]
developed a blockchain-based trusted authentication system
for the cloud RoF network. Szymanski [143] designed a
system with silicon photonics transceivers that realizes secure
and green communication. Meanwhile, the SDN control plane
can also help to prevent unauthorized transmission.
IV. D ISCUSSIONS AND C HALLENGES
Converged with RoF, the 6G IoT system can benefit from
the joint use of wireless and optical domains, thus creating
more opportunities and challenges in the future.
A. High-Performance Backbone Network
As part of the backbone network, the optical fibers pro-
vide high-speed and wide-band data transmission. In current
record fiber communication experiments [108], [144], a net
per-carrier interface rate achieves 1 Tb/s. Aggregate WDM
in SMF achieves up to 115 Tb/s, while it reaches up to 10
Pb/s in the MCF. However, there may be a bottleneck when
dealing with the large traffic volume in the future 6G IoT.
Meanwhile, RoF still suffers from the nonlinear transmission
effect caused by the fiber, which may cause distortion and
decrease the accuracy when recovering the received signals.
To further improve the performance, some upcoming topics
include the following.
1) Effective Multiplexing: Multiplexing technologies on
spectral and spatial should be developed or combined to cre-
ate more superchannels for fiber transmission, providing better
support for massive access.
8728
2) Fiber Distortion Mitigation: Although fiber causes
minor distortion to the signals, the effect increases with
the carrier frequency and transmission rate. Thus, mitiga-
tion methods for fiber distortion should be considered, such
as chromatic dispersion, polarization-mode dispersion, and
nonlinear distortion.
3) Flexible Networking: Increasing levels of automatic
network management are expected for future systems.
Meanwhile, 5G introduces network slicing to enable higher
scenario adaptivity. Managed by intelligent algorithms, this
will lead to the “zero-latency” reaction in the future IoT
system.
B. Enhanced AI
As the 6G IoT system will fully support automation
systems such as automatic driving, UAV, and Industry 5.0,
enhanced AI technologies will be embedded at the network
equipment [145]. Even with the conjunction of the optic
and wireless link of RoF, the network will be able to
adapt to the nature of flexible and automatic control. AI
is capable of becoming the foundation of future communi-
cation computation to achieve superior target performance
in RoF-based systems, including adaptive modulation con-
trol [96], nonlinear compensation [109], beam management
for mmWave [146], [147], sensing with higher accuracy [148],
resource allocation to relief the system high cost [149], [150],
user behavior prediction to maintain the requirements on
latency and reliability, and connectivity management for higher
security and privacy demands for future IoT systems [151].
Main challenges include the following.
1) Complex Model Design: As the 6G IoT system requires
full support for diverse new use cases, the complex scenar-
ios with multitask, such as ultradense heterogeneous structure
and high-reliable high-mobility access, are challenging for AI
model design. Enabled by the high-performance CO compu-
tation ability, there will be complex AI models, such as super
deep learning architecture and the black-box model to man-
age the various devices and tasks from the physical layer to
the application layer. In-depth research for complex scenarios
is required when designing the model to achieve a satisfying
performance.
2) High Efficient Training: IoT systems may suffer the
dynamic environment and limited collected data. AI mod-
els are usually highly specialized in a specific application
domain. It requires training before being effective to solve
the problem, and retraining requires additional time and com-
putation. Whenever the IoT environment changes, there is
a requirement for real-time intelligent algorithms for the
dynamic environment. Meanwhile, as the network attack meth-
ods keep increasing, the adaptiveness is helpful for system
security.
3) Heterogeneous Data Computation: The 6G IoT gen-
erates a large volume of heterogeneous data with multiple
dimensions by the complex network structure and network
devices, as well as the massive IoT devices. To reduce power
consumption, most devices have a limited computation ability.
Proper data mining algorithm as well as computation resource
allocation are required, such as, in a centralized or distributed
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IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 11, JUNE 1, 2021
way, utilizing specific paradigms, such as edge computing and
fog computing, will be challenging for enhanced AI in the 6G
IoT system.
C. Efficient Resource Management
To achieve sufficient efficiency in terms of energy, spectrum,
bytes, and computation, the IoT system must optimize resource
utilization [152]. Due to the nature that device charging results
in higher operation costs, improved energy efficiency allows
the device to run longer with limited power consumption.
Spectrum efficiency can be achieved by data reduction to limit
network congestion. For the storage of data, bytes optimization
lowers the data sharing costs and simplifies data processing.
Computation describes the ability of processors, which takes
time and power consumption to get the outputs. These aspects
are considered when designing and implementing the system,
and they are usually coupled with each other. In such cases, the
researchers take care of both sides to achieve a balance. Some
existing solutions include routing optimization [153], sampling
rate/bandwidth minimization [154], [155], multiple compo-
nents optimization [156], [157], and flexible computation
paradigm [158], [159].
Some open topics include the following.
1) Radio Resource Control: For future networks with high
density, the resource is limited for a single subscriber. The
challenges include massive access, interference control, neigh-
bor recognization, and coordinated communication for radio
resources.
2) Energy Resource Transfer: The IoT devices are mostly
low cost and may be inconvenient for frequent charging. It
will be helpful when energy could transmit along with the
communication routes, wired or wirelessly, such as wireless
power harvesting and power over fiber [160].
3) Computation Resource Allocation: An extensive scale
of system promotes cooperation seamlessly among multiple
devices, multiple servers, and multiple clouds. The network
resources shall be virtualized and managed, then compute with
free resources.
V. C ONCLUSION
In this article, we studied the brief roadmap of 6G IoT
systems and the available technologies for the convergence
with RoF. According to the current applications and efforts,
there are promising opportunities for supporting a capable,
flexible, reliable, and secure system. However, we still face
challenges for the implementation of a capable and effective
system to achieve the extremely high demands of 6G IoT
systems. It is expected that this review will encourage more
researchers and developers to investigate 6G IoT converged
with RoF, to explore the possible solutions in the near future.
A PPENDIX
A BBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS
3GPP 3rd generation partnership project.
3CLS Communications, computing, control, loca-
tion and sensing.
5G NR 5G new radio.
AI Artificial intelligence.
CHEN AND OKADA: TOWARD 6G INTERNET OF THINGS AND CONVERGENCE WITH RoF SYSTEM 8729

A-MMWoF Analog RoF. mmWave Millimeter wave.

AR Augmented reality. MPS Multipurpose 3CLS and energy services.
A-RoF Analog RoF. MTC Machine-type communication.
BBU Baseband unit. mURLLC Massive URLLC.
BS Base station. NB-IoT Narrow-band IoT.
CAPEX Capital expenditures. NFC Near-field communication.
CDMA Code division multiple access. NFV Network function virtualization.
CMC Coordinated mapping and combining. OFDM Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing.
CO Central office. OPEX Operating expenses.
CPRI Common public radio interface. PN Pseudonoise.
C-RAN Cloud radio access network. PON Passive optical network.
D-OMA Delta-orthogonal multiple access. QAM Quadrature amplitude modulation.
D-RoF Digital RoF. QoS Quality of service.
DOS Denial of service. RF Radio frequency.
DSP Digital signal processing. R&F Radio-and-fiber.
DSRC Dedicated short range communication. RFID Radio-frequency identification.
EC-GSM-IoT Extended coverage GSM for IoT. RoF Radio over fiber.
eCPRI Enhanced CPRI. RoMMF-FSO Radio over multimode fiber and free space
eMBB Enhanced mobile broadband. optics.
FBMC Filter bank multicarrier. RRH Remote radio head.
FSO Free-space optical. SATSI Space-air-terrestrial-sea integrated.
Fi-Wi Fiber-wireless. SD-IoT Software-defined IoT.
FSO Free-space-optics. SDN Software-defined network.
FTTB Fiber to the building. SDoF Sigma delta modulated signal over fiber.
FTTE Fiber to the exchange. SMF Single-mode fiber.
FTTH Fiber to the home. SMFT Single mode filtering technique.
FTTN Fiber to the node. TSN Time-sensitive networking.
FTTx Fiber to the x. TST Terrestrial–satellite terminal.
FTTZ Fiber to the zone. UAV Unmanned aerial vehicle.
GFDM Generalized frequency-division multiplexing. ULL Ultralow latency.
GPS Global positioning system. URLLC Ultrareliable low-latency communication.
GSM Global system for mobile communications. V2I Vehicle to infrastructure.
HAN Home area network. V2P Vehicle to pedestrian.
HCS Human-centric services. V2R Vehicle to roadside.
HDFE Hammerstein type decision feedback equal- V2V Vehicle to vehicle.
izer. V2X Vehicle to everything.
HetNet Heterogeneous network. VHF Very high frequency.
HMI Human–machine interaction. VR Virtual reality.
IID Independent and identically distributed. WDM Wavelength division multiplexing.
IIoT Industrial IoT.
IMT-2020 International mobile telecommunications-
2020.
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doi: 10.1109/JIOT.2018.2838584. as an Associate Professor in 2000, where he has been a Professor since 2006.
[160] C. Vázquez et al., “Multicore fiber scenarios supporting power His research interests include wireless communications and power transfer.
over fiber in radio over fiber systems,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, Prof. Okada is serving as the Chair of the Technical Committee on
pp. 158409–158418, 2019, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2950599. Wideband Systems in IEICE.

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