Pilot Aided Estimation and Equalisation of a Radio over Fibre System in WCDMA

In this paper the impact of a Radio over Fibre (RoF) subsystem on the capacity performance of Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) is evaluated. The study investigates the use of pilot aided channel estimation to compensate for the optical subsystem nonlinearities for different channel conditions, estimation intervals, and coding schemes. The results show that pilot aided channel estimation is an effective method for compensating the composite impairments of the optical subsystem and the RF channel. It is found that there is always a suitable pilot power level which maximises the system capacity performance regardless of coding scheme and channel condition. Also, the peak capacity is only slightly affected by a decrease in the estimation interval.