Photonics-assisted Amplification for Baseband-over-Fiber Links

We propose and experimentally investigate the use of a photonics-assisted amplification technique for baseband-over-fiber (BBoF) links. The proposed approach focuses on increasing the received electrical baseband signal in fiber-wireless systems, by exploiting the four-wave mixing effect for proving baseband electrical gain of up 19 dB. An experimental digital performance analysis in terms of bit error rate (BER) demonstrate the feasibility of our strategy for improving the power efficiency in BBoF links. By using PBA we enhance the BER performance from 10
^-3
to 10
^-11
, for the same electrical power.