VCSEL-Based Radio-Over-G652 Fiber System for Short-/Medium-Range MFH Solutions

In view of the realization of short- and medium-range Mobile Front-Haul connections for present (LTE) and future (5G) cellular networks, a cost effective, low-consumption radio over fiber system is proposed, based on 850-nm Single Mode Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers and Standard Single Mode Fibers (SSMFs). An efficient countermeasure to possible impairments due to the bimodal behavior of SSMFs at 850 nm allows even in critical cases to maintain at high level the quality of the received signal. The performances are evaluated with reference to the Physical Downlink Shared Channel of an entire LTE frame with 20-MHz bandwidth centered in band 20 of the standard. In terms of error vector magnitude and outage probability under temperature stress, the system is able to transmit 256-QAM signals in compliance with the LTE standard, which corresponds to a raw data rate transmission of 134.4 Mbit/s, up to distances of 1.5 km.