A multi-band access radio-over-fiber link with SSB optical millimeter-wave signals based on optical carrier suppression modulation

In this paper, we have reported a radio-over-fiber (RoF) link with a single sideband (SSB) optical millimeter (mm)-wave signal to support the 20 GHz, 40 GHz and 60 GHz mm-wave multiband wireless accesses, based on the optical carrier suppression (OCS) modulation via a nested Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM). The downstream data is only modulated on one of the multiple tones of the optical signal. At the base station (BS), according to the requirement of the wireless users, the multitone optical signal can be decomposed as different SSB optical signals using tunable fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). Each SSB optical signal consists of two tones: the data-bearing optical tone and a referenced optical local oscillator to convert the baseband optical signal to the electrical mm-wave one based on heterodyne beating. The simulation results reveal that our proposed scheme can provide multiband wireless accesses and without dispersion compensation after 30 km single-mode fiber (SMF), the 10 Gb/s 4-QAM downstream data on the three-band mm-waves have minor degradation.