Challenges to radio over fiber (RoF) technology and its mitigation schemes – A review

For realization of future high performance integrated networks, broadband distribution and access networks and to meet the increasing demand of multimedia services with a guaranteed quality of service, RoF technology comes out as the most promising technology that combines the capacity of optical networks with the flexibility and mobility of wireless networks. Reduction in complexity at the antenna site, reduction in installation cost of access networks, possibility of dynamically allocation of radio carriers to different antenna sites, transparency and scalability are the few advantages of radio-over-fiber (RoF) technology. In this paper, we review the different challenges that limit the probable capabilities of RoF communication networks and different mitigation techniques to combat with these challenges to realize high-performance RoF links.