Seamless Digital Wireless-Photonic Receiver With Optical Phase Diversity

This paper forms the basis for wireless constellation detection in seamless digital wireless-photonic receivers. The two intermediary stages in the proposed receiver model are discussed: Wireless-to-Optical (W-O) and Optical-to-Electrical (O-E) symbol mapping stages. The inherent barrier of erroneous constellation detection due to symbol degeneracy in the W-O and O-E mapping stages is reported. A receiver architecture with optical phase diversity is subsequently proposed to overcome the barrier of degeneracy. Breaking degeneracy not only lays the foundation for reliable detection of wireless constellations in seamless digital wireless-photonic receivers, but also ensures their compatibility with practical modulation schemes such as M-PSK and M-QAM.