A Review of the Impairments and Challenges of Radio over Fiber Technology and their Mitigation Strategies

In the Radio over Fiber (RoF) transmission system, a radio signal modulates the light wave transmitted over an optical fiber. This technology provides a better pathway for propagating wireless signals via optical mediums in broadband wireless networks. RoF technology has evolved over the last three decades with a large-scale number of research that has been accomplished in this field. RoF Technology suffers from different challenges. Many of them have already been overcome, and many more need to be addressed. In emerging networks such as 5G and beyond, the bandwidth, latency, Jitter, and fidelity demands on fronthaul networks result in significant challenges to the RoF schemes. Furthermore, the movement from the lower microwave region to the mm-wave region was straight forward advantageous for wireless operations in terms of bandwidth. However, this movement imposes more challenges on RoF deployment because the combination of wireless and wired (Fiber) networks in one infrastructure is a difficult task and challenging. Therefore, this paper provides a general overview of the RoF technology with a detailed focus on the impairments, the mitigation strategies and techniques, and a discussion of its future challenges.