A Cost-Effective and Precoding-Free Optical Frequency Multiplication Scheme for mmW Photonic Fronthauls

[EN] In this letter, we demonstrate a novel and cost-effective scheme for upconverting data to radiofrequency (RF) in a millimeter wave (mmW) photonic fronthaul based on optical frequency multiplication for frequency up-conversion. The approach is based on an electrical mixer and a Dual-Drive Mach-Z...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Botella-Campos, Marta|||0000-0002-1317-286X, Romero-Huedo, Jaime, Mora Almerich, José|||0000-0002-2877-4118, Ortega Tamarit, Beatriz|||0000-0003-1196-4756
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2025
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Repositorio:RiuNet. Repositorio Institucional de la Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:riunet.upv.es:10251/229339
Acceso en línea:https://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/229339
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator
Millimeter wave
Optical access networks
Radio-over-fiber
RF mixer
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] In this letter, we demonstrate a novel and cost-effective scheme for upconverting data to radiofrequency (RF) in a millimeter wave (mmW) photonic fronthaul based on optical frequency multiplication for frequency up-conversion. The approach is based on an electrical mixer and a Dual-Drive Mach-Zehnder modulator (DD-MZM) where carrier suppressed double-sideband (CS-DSB) modulation is held for mmW signal generation after photodetection. The viability of the approach is demonstrated by transmitting 5G orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals with quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) and 64-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) across a 3 m long radio link as well as 10 km of standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) link in the 40 GHz mmW band. We assessed the system performance by evaluating the error-vector-magnitude (EVM), also focusing on the received optical and electrical power (RoP and ReP, respectively), with minimum EVM of 2.8 % for maximum RoP, while the full link leads to 3.4 % in this condition. Moreover, the maximum transmission throughput of the system for full link scenario reached 692 Mb/s and 1800 Mb/s for 5G OFDM and single carrier signals, respectively. The experimental measurements confirm the robustness and simplicity of the proposed approach to be employed for future mobile mmW communication networks deployment without using precoding techniques and optical filtering.