Incoherent Laser Heterodyned Long-Reach 60-GHz MMWoF Link With Volterra Filtered 16-QAM OFDM Beyond 13 Gbps

By remotely heterodyning two independent laser carriers, the long-reach 60-GHz millimeter-wave-over-fiber (MMWoF) link is demonstrated for the Volterra series filtered quadrature amplitude modulation orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (QAM-OFDM) transmission with nonlinear noise suppression, which enables 13-Gbps data delivery through 50-km single-mode fiber (SMF) and 3-m free-space links. A wavelength tunable colorless laser diode transmits the Volterra filter equalized QAM-OFDM data to remotely couple with a localized single-mode laser carrier at the optical receiving end of the MMWoF system. Such an incoherently coupled dual-mode carrier facilitates the optical single-carrier modulation to suppress chromatic dispersion induced power fading effect of the SMF transmitted QAM-OFDM data. The 2nd+3rd-order nonlinear noise induced by direct modulation, heterodyne conversion, and phase fluctuation of the incoherently coupled dual-mode carrier is corrected with the Volterra filter equalization to upgrade the decoded signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by >2 dB. After remotely heterodyning the downstream and the localized carriers with mutual incoherence in between, the 16-QAM OFDM transmission at a data rate up to 13.2 Gbps is successfully delivered over 3-m wireless link, which reveals the FEC certificated error vector magnitude of 14.1%, SNR of 17 dB, and bit error rate of 1.7 × 10
^-3
.