Fiber wireless-optical transceiver architectures for 60 GHz LANs

The availability of low cost commercially available components operating at 60 GHz, mainly driven by the approval of the consumer oriented IEEE 802.11ad and 802.15.3c standards, is expected to boost the deployment of 60 GHz wireless networks where an unlicensed band with around 7 GHz bandwidth is available. Nevertheless, the transmission of 60 GHz wireless signals is limited to a few meters (~10 m), which implies the deployment of multiple radio access points to cover a single house or building. Radio over fiber (RoF) technology can be an effective solution for delivering 60 GHz broadband signals, however the implementation of this scenario requires flexible low cost wireless-optical transceivers. The objective of this paper is to discuss and compare wireless-optical transceiver architectures identifying their major advantages and limitations.