An Optical Carrier Generation Approach for Cellular Millimeter-Wave Radio Systems

An optical carrier generation approach is presented for cellular millimeter-wave radio systems. The well-known methods distribute the millimeter wave signal via fibers. They have drawbacks because they need very high-speed photonic compo nents that are expensive. This problem is overcome by the new approach utilizing an optically transmitted low-frequency reference signal to generate the millimeter wave carrier. The new approach applies inexpensive photonic components and is less sensitive to the fiber dispersion.