Light-fidelity (LiFi) uses energy-efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for high-speed wireless communication, and it has a great potential to be integrated with fibre communication for future gigabit networks. However, by making fibre communication wireless, multiuser interference arises. Traditional methods use orthogonal multiple access (OMA) for interference avoidance. In this paper, multiuser interference is exploited with the use of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) relying on successive interference cancellation (SIC). The residual interference due to imperfect SIC in practical scenarios is characterized with a proportional model. Results show that NOMA offers 5 -10 dB gain on the equivalent signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) over OMA. The bit error rate (BER) performance of direct current optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DCO-OFDM) is shown to be significantly improved when SIC is used.

We review recent progress in the development of photonic devices and integration, with the emphasis on potential applications in microwave photonics where size, weight and power consumption reduction will be crucial to the realization of radio-over-fiber. Different material platforms such as InP, silicon photonics and silicon nitride will be compared for their suitability for active and passive component integration. Case studies in applications such as photonic beam forming will be used to illustrate the potential of integrated microwave photonics.

We explore a novel, free-space optics based approach for building data center interconnects. Data centers (DCs) are a critical piece of today’s networked applications in both private and public sectors. The key factors that have driven this trend are economies of scale, reduced management costs, better utilization of hardware via statistical multiplexing, and the ability to elastically scale applications in response to changing workload patterns. A robust DC network fabric is fundamental to the success of DCs and to ensure that the network does not become a bottleneck for high-performance applications. In this context, DC network design must satisfy several goals: high performance (e.g., high throughput and low latency), low equipment and management cost, robustness to dynamic traffic patterns, incremental expandability to add new servers or racks, and other practical concerns such as cabling complexity, and power and cooling costs. Current DC network architectures do not seem to provide a satisfactory solution, with respect to the above requirements. In particular, traditional static (wired) networks are either overprovisioned or oversubscribed. Recent works have tried to overcome the above limitations by augmenting a static (wired) “core” with some flexible links (RF-wireless or optical). These augmented architectures show promise, but offer only incremental improvement in performance. Specifically, RFwireless based augmented solutions also offer only limited performance improvement, due to inherent interference and range constraints of RF links. This paper explores an alternative design point—a fully flexible and all-wireless DC interrack network based on free-space optical (FSO) links. We call this FireFly as in; Free-space optical Inter-Rack nEtwork with high FLexibilitY. We will present our designs and tests using various configurations that can help the performance and reliability of the FSO links.

Flexible wireless datacenter networks based on free space optical communication (FSO) links are being considered as promising solutions to meet the future datacenter demands of high throughput, robustness to dynamic traffic patterns, cabling complexity and energy efficiency. Robust and precise steerable FSO links over dynamic traffic play a key role in the reconfigurable optical wireless datacenter inter-rack network. In this work, we propose and demonstrate a reconfigurable 10Gbps FSO system incorporated with smart beam acquisition and tracking mechanism based on gimballess two-axis MEMS micro-mirror and retro-reflective film marked aperture. The fast MEMS-based beam acquisition switches laser beam of FSO terminal from one rack to the next for reconfigurable networks, and the precise beam tracking makes FSO device auto-correct the misalignment in real-time. We evaluate the optical power loss and bit error rate performance of steerable FSO links at various directions. Experimental results suggest that the MEMS based beam steerable FSO links hold considerable promise for the future reconfigurable wireless datacenter networks.

Delivering maximum information capacity over MIMO antennae systems beam steering is critical so as to achieve the flexibility via beam steering, maximizing the number of users or community of users in Gb/s rate per user over distributed cloud-based optical-wireless access networks. This paper gives an overview of (i) demands of optical – wireless delivery with high flexibility, especially the beam steering of multi-Tbps information channels to information hungry community of users via virtualized beam steering MIMO antenna systems at the free-license mmW region; (ii) Proposing a novel photonic planar integrated waveguide systems composing several passive and active, passive and amplification photonic devices so as to generate mmW carrier and embedded baseband information channels to feed to antenna elements; (iii) Integration techniques to generate a radio over optical waveguide (RoOW) system-on-wafer (SoW) comprising MIMO planar antenna elements and associate photonic integrated circuits for both up- and down- links; (iv) Challenges encountered in the implementation of the SoW in both wireless and photonic domains; (v) Photonic modulation techniques to achieve maximum transmission capacity per wavelength per MIMO antenna system. (vi) A view on control-feedback systems for fast and accurate generation of phase pattern for MIMO beam steering via a bank of optical phase modulators to mmW carrier phases and their preservation in the converted mmW domain . (vi) The overall operational principles of the novel techniques and technologies based on the coherent mixing of two lightwave channels The entire SoW can be implemented on SOI Si-photonic technology or via hybrid integration. These technological developments and their pros- and cons- will be discussed to achieve 50Tera-bps over the extended 110 channel Cband single mode fiber with mmW centered at 58.6GHz and 7GHz free-license band.

We present a double cladding, high-mesa-type waveguide UTC photodetector with an improved the responsivity. In this device structure, an InGaAs thin core layer was sandwiched by p-InP/InGaAsP and n-InP/InGaAsP cladding layers, including a UTC structure, in order to obtain a good optical coupling between the waveguide and the fiber. By comparing the resulting mode field with that obtained with a single cladding layer structure, we confirmed that the vertical mode field was enlarged. Without a spot size converter, the measured responsivity was as high as 0.6 A/W at 1550 nm, which suggests a responsivity three times higher than that of back-illuminated structures, and higher responsivity than that of previous reports. A high frequency performance (f_3dB = 100 GHz) was also measured. The device structure, including the layer, doping level conditions, and optical fiber coupling results are discussed, and its performance is characterized in detail.

Millimeter-wave and terahertz-wave technologies are promising solutions for high-speed wireless communication as well as nondestructive imaging due to its high frequency (short wavelength) nature. In the study, we propose and demonstrate high-speed wireless communication in millimeter- and terahertz-wave bands adopted by advanced optical fiber communication technologies: combination of a radio over fiber (RoF) manner for generation of the signals and a high-speed digital signal processing implemented in a receiver. The RoF technique is also capable for a local-oscillator signal transport over the fiber to the remote sites. Fiber-remoted distributed radar system is also discussed in the paper.

We have proposed and developed array-antenna-electrode electro-optic (EO) LiNbO₃ modulators to convert wireless millimeter-wave signals to optical signals. In particular, by introducing polarization-reversed structures in the LiNbO₃ crystal/film of the device substrate, the advanced functions of discrimination between space-division-multiplexed (SDM) wireless signals and generation of optical single-sideband (SSB) modulation signals are obtainable. In this paper, newly developed EO modulators operating in the 60 GHz band are presented. Applications to up-links in fifth generation (5G) mobile communication systems are also discussed.

Fifth-generation (5G) wireless access network promises to support higher access data rate with more than 1,000 times capacity with respect to current long-term evolution (LTE) systems. New radio-access-technologies (RATs) based on higher carrier frequencies to millimeter-wave (MMW) radio-over-fiber, and carrier-aggregation (CA) using multi-band resources are intensively studied to support the high data rate access and effectively use of frequency resources in heterogeneous mobile network (Het-Net). In this paper, we investigate several enabling technologies for MMW RoF systems in 5G Het-Net. Efficient mobile fronthaul (MFH) solutions for 5G centralized radio access network (C-RAN) and beyond are proposed, analyzed and experimentally demonstrated based on the analog scheme. Digital predistortion based on memory polynomial for analog MFH linearization are presented with improved EVM performances and receiver sensitivity. We also propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel inter-/intra- RAT CA scheme for 5G Het- Net. The real-time standard 4G-LTE signal is carrier-aggregated with three broadband 60GHz MMW signals based on proposed optical-domain band-mapping method. RATs based on new waveforms have also been studied here to achieve higher spectral-efficiency (SE) in asynchronous environments. Full-duplex asynchronous quasi-gapless carrier aggregation scheme for MMW ROF inter-/intra-RAT based on the FBMC is also presented with 4G-LTE signals. Compared with OFDM-based signals with large guard-bands, FBMC achieves higher spectral-efficiency with better EVM performance at less received power and smaller guard-bands.

In this paper, we present efficient solutions for simultaneous transmission of multiple radio signals over seamless fiber wireless systems, including radio signals in legacy microwave bands and in high frequency bands. At central stations, radio signals can be mapped onto the same optical transport channel using data mapping algorithms and/or subcarrier multiplexing technique. After the fiber transmission, the received signals can be down-converted, digitized, and de-mapped to recover the originally transmitted signals. We present and compare two different methods, including a radio-over-fiber system and optical up-conversion at remote sites and an intermediate-frequency-over-fiber system and an electrical up-conversion at remote sites. We experimentally confirm the suitability of both the transmission methods, and achieve satisfactory performance for all signals, including LTE-advanced, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing, and filtered-orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing signals. In particular, the latter method can provide a high optical spectral efficiency and low fiber dispersion effect and is suitable for ultra-dense small cell deployment in future mobile networks.

In this work we propose and evaluate experimentally the performance of IEEE 802.11ac WLAN standard signals in radio-over-fiber (RoF) distributed-antenna systems based on multicore fiber (MCF) for in-building WLAN connectivity. The RoF performance of WLAN signals with different bandwidth is investigated considering up to IEEE 802.11ac maximum of 160 MHz per user. We evaluate experimentally the performance of WLAN signals employing different modulation and coding schemes achieving bitrates from 78 Mbps to 1404 Mbps per user in distances up to 300 m in a 4-core MCF. The performance of the wireless standard multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) processing algorithms included in WLAN signals applied to the RoF transmission in MCF optical systems is also evaluated. The impact on the quality of the signal from one of the cores in the MIMO processing is investigated and compared with the results achieved with single-input single-output (SISO) transmission in each core. We measured the error vector magnitude (EVM) and the OFDM data burst information of the received WLAN signals after RoF transmission for different distributed-antenna systems with uni- and bi-directional MCF communication. Finally, we compare the received EVM of a single-antenna system (SISO arrangement) with WLAN systems using two antennas (2×2 MIMO) and four antennas (4×4 MIMO).

Multicore fiber (MCF) systems have been proposed for high capacity optical transmission applications ranging from the access network to long haul. In this paper we critically review the application of MCF-based systems in optical fronthaul technology with the simultaneous radio-over-fiber (RoF) transmission of 3GPP LTE-Advanced signals in downlink and uplink directions. The experimental study evaluates the quality of the received signals in terms of error vector magnitude (EVM) of the LTE-Advanced signal and of each channel frame according to the 3GPP wireless standard. The suitability of the 3GPP MIMO processing algorithms is also investigated experimentally evaluating two-antenna and four-antenna system configuration and compared with single-antenna (SISO) transmission in a 4-core MCF.

Future high capacity of the 5th Generation radio environment will boost transport networks to be adapted. The high bandwidth, together with stringent delay and jitter requirements, make dedicated optical connectivity a preferred solution for fronthaul. Those Radio Access Networks apart from higher capacity and lower latency should have higher energy efficiency. In order to cover this aspect, power over fiber has been pointed out as a key technology for that purpose having in mind that control plane will be centralized on future Cloud RAN and that sometimes Remote Radio Heads should be deployed in places lacking external power supply in order to fulfill the desired coverage. In this paper, different scenarios on potential demanding environments of power over fiber on Radio over Fiber systems such as automotive, in-house and remote mobile fronthaul will be discussed. Some tests on power over fiber systems based on different optical fibers are provided.

Optical power-delivery systems are applied to distribute electrical power over optical fibers for systems such as remote wireless radio heads. Typically, the electrical voltage at the receiver side is low, around 1.0 V, owing to the use of a long-wavelength carrier. Consequently, we recently proposed a light-wave-modulation method for increasing the received electrical voltage. A 940-nm high-power laser was directly modulated to form a modulated light wave. We also used a small inductor to generate an induced electromotive force from the modulated light wave. We successfully obtained a peak voltage over 18 V using this simple technique.

Terahertz wireless communication is receiving great interest from researchers and industries, thanks to the new spectral windows between 0.1 and 1 THz offering opportunities for ultra-high-data-rate wireless transmission. Wavelength division multiplexing for wireless-over-fiber is foreseen as an enabling technique to support connection between base stations and a central station. This paper reviews architectures for photonic distribution and generation of multiband signals for sub- THz wireless communications, giving rates up to 100 Gb/s (20 Gb/s per band) using the full spectrum between 220 GHz and 280 GHz for downlink wireless transmission, and 10 Gb/s for uplink using on-off keying.

Due to its larger capacity and lower energy consumption, High-speed train (HST) system is playing very important role in mass transportation. Various Communication systems for HST have been deployed mainly for train control and safety purpose. Growing demand of broadband wireless communication for passengers on the train requires new data transmission technique suitable for high speed and dense user environment. In this paper, distributed antenna systems (DASs) with combination of W-band millimeter communication and radio over fiber (RoF) technology is presented. The communication system can basically avoid transmission rate decrease due to handover employing RoF based signal distribution architecture. Since ITU-R assigned wide band frequency bands (92.0-94.0, 94.1-100.0, 102-109.5GHz) for mobile system and relatively low propagation loss of the frequency bands, a high data transmission rate more than 1Gb/s per train and cost effective system can be realized. The technical challenges in providing DAS-based communication systems for HSTs include system architecture, RF system design and propagation issue of W-band frequency in a railway environment. Propagation studies in the specific railway environment such as tunnel, cutting and viaduct are investigated. Wide-band single carrier, OFDM and sub-channel single carrier is considered a candidate of the system. Designed and evaluated characteristics of GaAs compound MMICs, system level consideration of RF/IF/RoF link and EVM measurement of wide band modulation signals are discussed and outlined.

Future broadband access networks in the 5G framework will need to be bilateral, exploiting both optical and wireless technologies. This paper deals with new approaches and synergies on radio-over-fiber (RoF) technologies and how those can be leveraged to seamlessly converge wireless technology for agility and mobility with passive optical networks (PON)-based backhauling. The proposed convergence paradigm is based upon a holistic network architecture mixing mm-wave wireless access with photonic integration, dynamic capacity allocation and network coding schemes to enable high bandwidth and low-latency fixed and 60GHz wireless personal area communications for gigabit rate per user, proposing and deploying on top a Medium-Transparent MAC (MT-MAC) protocol as a low-latency bandwidth allocation mechanism. We have evaluated alternative network topologies between the central office (CO) and the access point module (APM) for data rates up to 2.5 Gb/s and SC frequencies up to 60 GHz. Optical network coding is demonstrated for SCM-based signaling to enhance bandwidth utilization and facilitate optical-wireless convergence in 5G applications, reporting medium-transparent network coding directly at the physical layer between end-users communicating over a RoF infrastructure. Towards equipping the physical layer with the appropriate agility to support MT-MAC protocols, a monolithic InP-based Remote Antenna Unit optoelectronic PIC interface is shown that ensures control over the optical resource allocation assisting at the same time broadband wireless service. Finally, the MT-MAC protocol is analysed and simulation and analytical theoretical results are presented that are found to be in good agreement confirming latency values lower than 1msec for small- to mid-load conditions.

For overcoming the performance degradation problems of the conventional visible light (VL) positioning system, which are due to the co-channel interference by adjacent light and the irregularity of the VL reception position in the three dimensional (3-D) VL channel, the secure positioning technique based on the two dimensional (2-D) encrypted VL map is proposed, implemented as the prototype for the specific embedded positioning system, and verified by performance tests in this paper. It is shown from the test results that the proposed technique achieves the performance enhancement over 21.7% value better than the conventional one in the real positioning environment, and the well known PN code is the optimal stream encryption key for the good VL positioning.

Given the imminent radio frequency spectrum crunch, Visible Light Communication (VLC) is being proposed as an alternative wireless technology allowing for scalable connectivity to potentially millions of mobile and Internet-of- Things (IoT) devices. A VLC system uses a photo-detector (PD) receiver that converts the optically modulated light from a light source into a modulated electrical signal. The corresponding receiver electrical bandwidth is typically inversely proportional to the PD active area. Consequently, to construct a high-speed VLC link, the PD active area is often substantially reduced and an optical concentrator is used to enhance the receiver collection area. However, to achieve high concentrating factor, the link field-of-view (FOV) needs to be narrow due to the étendue conservation in linear passive optical systems. This paper studies a Fluorescent Concentrator (FC) that breaks this étendue conservation. The FC is not only based on reflective and refractive principles but also makes use of fluorescence process. A comparison between the FC and conventional optical concentrators, namely Compound Parabolic Concentrator (CPC) is also investigated. The trade-off between received signal strength and incoming link angle is demonstrated over 60° coverage. Experimental results show that performance degradation as the link angle increases using FC-based receivers is significantly lower than for conventional CPC.

High-performance photodetectors (HPPDs), with high output power and bandwidth, are needed for RF photonics links. Applications for these HPPDs range from high-power remote antennas, low-duty-cycle RF pulse generation, linear photonic links, high dynamic range optical systems, and radio-over-fiber (ROF). Freedom Photonics is a manufacturer of high-power photodetectors (HPPD) for the 1480 to 1620nm wavelength range, now being offered commercially. In 2016, Freedom has developed a HPPD for similar applications extending into the V-band. The basic device structure used for these photodetectors can achieve over 100-GHz bandwidths with slight variations. This work shows data for RF power and bandwidth performance for various size photodiodes, between 10 μm and 28 μm in diameter. Measurement data will be presented, which were collected at both assembly level and for fully packaged detectors. For detector devices with bandwidth performance over 50 GHz, the generated RF power achieved is expected to be over 15 dBm. This performance is exceptional considering the photodiode is fully integrated into a hermetic package designed for 65 GHz. Improvements in the coplanar waveguide (CPW) transmission line and flip-chip bonding design were integral in achieving the higher saturation at the higher bandwidth performance. Further development is required to achieve a >100 GHz packaged photodetector module.