5G-NR Radio- and Power-Over-Fiber System Employing Multicore Fiber for Reconfigurable Metasurface Antenna Beam Steering

A 5G-NR radio-over-fiber system (RoF) that also incorporates power-over-fiber (PoF) via a multicore fiber (MCF) link is used to support a reconfigurable metasurface (MSF) antenna for rapid beam steering. Optical signals for RoF-PoF are generated in a central office (CO), and transmitted to the remote antenna unit (RAU) via MCF. A reconfigurable MSF antenna has been designed to perform continuous steering of the radiated beam using indirect optical control of varactor diodes. Subsequently, a proof-of-concept 5G-NR system has been demonstrated for the sub-6 GHz band. The PoF part of the system was able to provide 0–5 V to reconfigure the MSF antenna and thus achieve total beam steering of 66°. For the RoF segment, the measured EVM values for a 64-QAM scheme vary between 2.6%–6.9% for all states.