10.51-Tbit/s multi-channel IF-over-fiber transmission with SDM/WDM/SCM for beyond-5G mobile fronthaul accommodating ultra-high-density antennas

In beyond-5G and 6G mobile communication systems, it is expected that massive numbers of antennas are densely deployed to provide a stable and high-speed communication environment. To efficiently accommodate high-density antennas, high-capacity mobile fronthaul (MFH) is also required. Intermediate-frequency-over-fiber (IFoF) is considered as one of the attractive solutions for realizing high-capacity MFH due to its high spectral efficiency and multi-channel transmission capability. In this paper, we demonstrate the highest-capacity IFoF transmission with combinations of space division multiplexing, wavelength division multiplexing, and subcarrier multiplexing; 4608 channels of 64-quadrature amplitude modulation orthogonal frequency division multiplexing signals with a total net bit rate of 10.51 Tbit/s (
${4608} \times {380.16}\;{\rm MHz/ch} \times {6\; {\rm bit/s/Hz}}$
) are successfully transmitted over a 10.1-km uncoupled 12-core multi-core fiber.