A review of wireless-photonic systems: Design methodologies and topologies, constraints, challenges, and innovations in electronics and photonics

Photonic networks form the backbone for data communications. In particular, in current and future wireless communication systems, photonic networks are becoming increasingly popular for data distribution between the central office and the remote antenna units at base stations. As wireless-photonic systems become in increasing demand, low-cost implementation of such systems will be desirable. This paper describes how integrated photonics and electronics, on silicon, can be used to design such systems. Various building blocks of such silicon-photonics systems are reviewed. The emphasis is on a 60 GHz wireless system which could be suitable for the emerging 5th-generation (5G) cellular networks. The implementation discussed here uses digital baseband optical transmission as opposed to the radio-over-fibre approach.