Asia-Pacific Telecommunity APT Report on Characteristics and Requirements of Optical and Electric Components for Millimeter-wave Radio on Fiber systems

1. Introduction Radio on Fiber (RoF) system can provide low-cost and high-performance radio-wave distribution by using remote access units (RAUs) where lightwave modulated by radio-wave is converted to radio-wave by a high-speed photodetector (PD) [1]. In microwave bands, RoF systems are successfully used for mobile services to provide signals to the mobile terminals located at such shadowing areas as underground, tunnel and inside buildings. As well known, millimeter-wave can carry high-speed data streams [2]. However, very high-frequency signals should be synthesized at a number of base stations (BSs) to cover a large area. RoF systems can provide low loss and cost effective millimeter-wave signal distribution and collection of millimeter-wave signals at many small cells. Thus, millimeter-wave broadband wireless systems with RoF would be promising a new generation wireless access or local area networks that would bring the cost-effective broadband infrastructure for access systems for APT countries. This Report provides information on characteristics and requirements of optical and electrical components for millimeter-wave RoF systems. Components of high-speed electric-to-optical (E/O) and optical-to-electric (O/E) conversion devices designed for optical digital systems would be useful for millimeter-wave RoF systems. Because requirements of components for RoF systems are quite different from those for digital systems not only the system characterization techniques but also E/O and O/E components specialized for RoF are very important for designing RoF systems. Annex 1 summarizes information on characterization of E/O and O/E conversion devices for information..