MIMO based radio-over-fiber link for millimeter wave generation using external optical modulator

Abstract

In this paper, photonically assisted millimeter wave signal generation techniques are proposed for modern space applications. For this, two designs are investigated with different optical modulators, namely, amplitude modulator and Dual Drive-Mach Zehnder Modulator (DD-MZM). A 2*2 Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) transmitter with a 100 GHz frequency spacing is used to broadcast Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) signals, and it encodes the signals using a 1Gbps pseudo-random bit sequence with return-to-zero coding. The Electrical Constellation Visualizer is used to examine the distortion in the proposed Radio over Fiber (RoF) links. The opti-system software simulation for DD-MZM design confirms a high-frequency millimeter wave signal with 60 dBm optical sideband suppression ratio (OSSR) and radio-frequency spurious suppression ratio (RFSSR) 72 dBm. Whereas Amplitude Modulator based architecture produces mm-wave signals with high Q-factor and low loss. Therefore, the merging of MIMO and RoF technology is a better solution for generating mm-wave signals for next-generation communication systems. © 2024 Author(s).