Multiband LTE-A and 4-PAM Signals Over Large-Core Plastic Fibers for In-Home Networks

This letter presents the transmission of eight standard compliant 64-QAM long term evolution advanced (LTE-A) bands and 1.4 Gb/s 4-pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) signals over 20 m of 1 mm core diameter graded-index polymethyl methacrylate plastic optical fiber. The optical transceiver consists of a red light VCSEL and a p-i-n photodiode followed by a transimpedance amplifier. The LTE-A signals were transparently transmitted with the radio-over-fiber technique and without complex frequency conversion at the receiver side. A gain control technique in the digital domain was used to avoid entering the VCSEL saturation regime. Digital filtering was employed at the transmitter and receiver sides to improve the spectrum shaping of the 4-PAM and LTE-A signals. The proposed system offers a single infrastructure in-home solution capable of accommodating wired services as well as multiband LTE-A wireless services. Only low-cost components were considered in this letter in order to provide a reliable and inexpensive solution for high-capacity in-home networks.