Integrated Wireless-Optical Backhaul and Fronthaul Provision Through Multicore Fiber

Luis Gonzalez Guerrero; Maria Morant; Tongyun Li; Martyn J. Fice; Alwyn J. Seeds; Roberto Llorente; Ian H. White; Richard V. Penty; Cyril C. Renaud

doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3014702

IEEE Access (Jan 2020)

Integrated Wireless-Optical Backhaul and Fronthaul Provision Through Multicore Fiber

Luis Gonzalez Guerrero,
Maria Morant,
Tongyun Li,
Martyn J. Fice,
Alwyn J. Seeds,
Roberto Llorente,
Ian H. White,
Richard V. Penty,
Cyril C. Renaud

Affiliations

Luis Gonzalez Guerrero: ORCiD; Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University College London, London, U.K.
Maria Morant: ORCiD; Nanophotonics Technology Center, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain
Tongyun Li: ORCiD; University of Bath, Bath, U.K.
Martyn J. Fice: ORCiD; Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University College London, London, U.K.
Alwyn J. Seeds: ORCiD; Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University College London, London, U.K.
Roberto Llorente: ORCiD; Nanophotonics Technology Center, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain
Ian H. White: ORCiD; University of Bath, Bath, U.K.
Richard V. Penty: ORCiD; Department of Engineering, Electrical Division, Centre for Photonic Systems, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K.
Cyril C. Renaud: ORCiD; Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University College London, London, U.K.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3014702
Journal volume & issue: Vol. 8
pp. 146915 – 146922

Abstract

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In this paper we propose multicore fiber (MCF) as the medium to transport the different signals associated with various wireless applications (ranging from access to fronthauling and backhauling) from the baseband unit (BBU) to the cell-site. Using 1 km of a 7-core MCF, we simultaneously transmit fronthaul and backhaul signals from the BBU to the cell site, where they are converted to carrier frequencies in the mm-wave and sub-THz band, respectively. The backhaul is evaluated with a 12.5 GBd 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signal, whereas the fronthaul is evaluated with a 7 Gbit/s on-off keying (OOK) signal carrying 14 LTE-compatible channels. The fronthaul signal is generated with a novel compression technique that achieves an efficiency 3-times higher than the one obtained with the common public radio interface (CPRI) protocol. Optical heterodyning is implemented at the cell site for optical-to-RF conversion. The local oscillator (LO) signal required for optical heterodyning is transmitted in a dedicated core, reducing the system complexity and enabling its straight-forward reuse for uplink (UL) transmission. The experimental demonstration includes the simultaneous full-duplex transmission of both the fronthaul and backhaul signals, using 6 cores of the MCF at the same time and achieving a gross data rate of 57 Gbit/s.

Published in IEEE Access

ISSN: 2169-3536 (Online)
Publisher: IEEE
Country of publisher: United States
LCC subjects: Technology: Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering
Website: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=6287639

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