Experimental performance analysis of MB-OFDM Ultra-Wideband Radio-Over-Fiber signals in the 60-GHz band using a commercially-available DFB laser

We present an experimental analysis of the performance of Multiband-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MB-OFDM) Ultra-Wideband (UWB) in the 60-GHz radio band distributed using Radio-Over-Fiber (RoF) techniques. To reduce cost, direct modulation of a commercially-available distributed feedback (DFB) laser is used with optical up-conversion achieved with a Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM). The impact of various parameters including laser bias current, temperature, UWB drive power, local oscillator (LO) power, fiber transmission and the received optical power are investigated. System performance is evaluated at a bit rate of 3.84 Gb/s using Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) measurements as a performance metric. We evaluate the different effects of these parameters on system performance and demonstrate the optimum values and the limitations imposed in fiber distribution.