High Capacity Converged Passive Optical Network and RoF-Based 5G+ Fronthaul Using 4-PAM and NOMA-CAP Signals

Network architectural changes to satisfy all the 5G+ mobile network specifications and requirements are necessary due to the popularization of streaming and cloud applications on omnipresent portable devices. The combination of massive installation of micro-cell antenna sites with the cloud access radio network (C-RAN) architecture has recently been nominated as a promising technology for high-capacity mobile fronthaul links, albeit at a high cost. An alternative approach for next-generation fronthaul networks is to utilize the already deployed passive optical networks (PONs) where wireless and wired services may coexist in a converged manner. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) modulation with multi-band carrierless amplitude and phase modulation (NOMA-CAP) has recently been investigated as a promising 5G+ modulation format candidate to increase the capacity and flexibility of future mobile networks. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the convergence of a NOMA-CAP wireless waveform with a single-carrier wired signal in a PON scenario using radio-over-fiber (RoF) technology. Specifically, fifteen NOMA-CAP bands, with two NOMA power levels to double the capacity, transmit 15 Gb/s multiplexed with a digital 10 Gb/s four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4) signal for downlink application. Two converged system implementations have been considered, first using electrical frequency division multiplexing (EFDM) and secondly using the hybrid EFDM-wavelength division multiplexing (EFDM-WDM). Successful transmission through a 25 km span of standard single-mode fiber is achieved with negligible transmission penalty for both proposed converged solutions.