A Novel Optical Carrier Distribution For Millimeter Wave Personal Communication Systems

Millimeter wave personal communications, which utilizes a microcellular radio network, is a very promising new service which has many attractive features. The microcellular architecture requires the generation of a stabilized millimeter wave carrier signal at each remotely located radio base station. Furthermore, since the number of the radio base stations in a typical system is high, cost is a major concern, which precludes the generation of the carrier frequency at the individual radio base station. Instead, it is desirable that the carrier signals for the radio base stations be provided by the center, and optical methods are suitable for the distribution of high frequency carrier signals. In this paper a new optical-millimeter wave distribution network, with emphasis on MMIC components, will be presented.