Photonic-Assisted Error-Free Wireless Communication With Multipath Precompensation Covering 2–18 GHz

A wireless communication experiment that uses photonic-assisted radio-frequency arbitrary waveform generation (RF-AWG) for precompensation of multipath distortion over a 2-18 GHz frequency band is reported. Photonic-assisted RF-AWG is used both for spread spectrum sounding of the multipath channel and for synthesis of precompensation waveforms that yield pulse compression and distortion suppression at the receiver. By directly encoding the precompensated waveforms in optical hardware, 250 Mbit/s error-free data transmission is achieved experimentally in binary-phase-shift-keying format. For the first time to our knowledge, phase compensation and time reversal precompensation techniques are compared in hardware encoded data transmission experiments; our results confirm predictions that phase compensation outperforms time reversal under intersymbol interference limited conditions.