Live demonstration of an SDN-reconfigurable, FPGA-based TxRx for an analog-IFoF/mmWave radio access network in an MNO’s infrastructure

This paper presents the end-to-end integration of a software defined network (SDN) reconfigurable real-time analog-intermediate frequency-over-fiber (A-IFoF)/millimeter wave (mmWave) layout into a real mobile network operator (MNO) infrastructure. The key part of the presented infrastructure is the fully programmable gateway array (FPGA)-based A-IFoF transceiver (TxRx), equipped with active SDN functionalities based on constant monitoring of the transport link. This layout was successfully evaluated in the physical data management and application layer. Regarding the physical layer performance evaluation, error vector magnitude values of 7.3% were achieved for quadrature phase shift keying waveforms, while the uninterrupted operation of real-time services such as augmented reality/virtual reality applications was enabled by the reactive SDN-based capacity reconfiguration capabilities.