Digital mobile fronthaul based on delta-sigma modulation for 32 LTE carrier aggregation and FBMC signals

We first experimentally demonstrated a digital mobile fronthaul (MFH) architecture using delta-sigma modulation as the new digitization interface to replace the conventional common public radio interface (CPRI). Both one-bit and two-bit delta-sigma modulations were demonstrated, and the digitized signals were transmitted over on-off keying (OOK) or 4-level pulse-amplitude-modulation (PAM4) optical intensity modulation-direct detection (IM-DD) links. 32 LTE component carriers (CCs) were digitized and transmitted over a 25-km single-λ 10-Gbaud OOK/PAM4 link, so that 32 LTE carrier aggregation (CA) specified by 3GPP release 13 can be supported. Compared with the conventional digitization interface based on CPRI, the fronthaul capacity is increased by four times. Error vector magnitude (EVM) less than 5% or 2.1% for all LTE CCs was obtained using one-bit and two-bit delta-sigma modulators, so that high-order modulations (256QAM/1024QAM) can be supported. As a waveform-agnostic digitization interface, delta-sigma modulation can digitize not only 4G-LTE but also 5G waveforms, and its 5G compatibility was verified by filter-bank-multicarrier (FBMC) signals. The tolerance to bit error ratio (BER) of the proposed delta-sigma modulation-based digital MFH was evaluated, and no significant EVM degradation was observed for BER up to 3 χ 10
⁻⁵
. A comparison with analog MFH reveals that the proposed digital MFH based on delta-sigma modulation can offer improved resilience against noise and nonlinear impairments, and it increases the fronthaul capacity by four times compared with the conventional CPRI-based digital MFH without significant EVM penalty.