A millimetre-wave fibre radio system for a broadband access network delivering ATM based services

ATM broadband access networks are currently attracting a great deal of attention in the literature. Such a network will support the delivery of the full range of advanced multimedia services to customers via connection to the backbone network. Different technological options exist for the realization of such a network. Field trials are taking place to assess experimentally the capabilities of copper pair, coaxial cable, fibre and fibre radio, separately or in combination, as technologies for the final drop to the customers. Millimetre-wave fibre radio systems are a competitive candidate for such broadband access networks delivering ATM based services because of the many advantages they offer such as flexibility of deployment, rapid roll-out and cost-effectiveness. An ACTS project, AC083: Fibre Radio ATM Networks and Services (FRANS), has been partly financed by the EC to study and demonstrate the capacity and economic practicability of millimetre-wave fibre radio systems for such applications. One of the key parts of such a system is the optical millimetre-wave source. In this paper, different system configurations and methods of realizing the optical millimetre-wave source have been suggested, studied and compared. This not only provides valuable information for system design in the FRANS project, but also shows possible alternative methods for the realization and simplification of such a system.