Performance analysis of wireless broadband systems employing optical fiber links

This paper reports an analysis of the performance of wireless broadband communication systems employing fiber-optic links to connect the base station with the control station. Rainfall attenuation on the radio link, and nonlinear distortions arising from the direct modulation of the laser source, besides the noise contributions coming out from both the optical transmitter and receiver, are considered in the analysis. As far as the radio link is concerned, the outage probability, due to the rainfall attenuation, is recounted for relevant cases; while, concerning the optical link, several carrier-to-noise ratio curves versus the optical modulation index of the channels are reported, varying different system parameters. With respect to the previous literature, a complete analysis of the optical link performance, in this type of systems, has been accomplished by taking into account, simultaneously, all the effects influencing the performance.