Distribution of Millimeter-Wave and Baseband Services Over an Integrated Reconfigurable Access Network Platform

An experimental investigation is presented that demonstrates how optical tunable filtering and polarization demultiplexing can be used to realize reconfigurable remote access nodes (RAN) in the context of future access networks that integrate diverge services. In particular, transmission of 60-GHz radio-over-fiber and baseband signals is successfully shown considering two reconfigurable RAN architectures. One based on optical tunable filtering and polarization demultiplexing and another one based only on optical tunable filtering. The perceived network architecture is that of multilevel ring/bus configuration and a two-RAN experiment shows the robustness of polarization multiplexing/demultiplexing in such a reconfigurable access network solution. The assets of physical-layer reconfigurability are discussed.