Convergence of optical and millimeter-wave broadband wireless access networks

This paper discusses hybrid fiber optic access network architectures combining baseband wireline and mm-wave channels. We focus on mm-wave radio over fiber (RoF) optical access network architectures which combine radio subcarrier multiplexing techniques to improve system efficiency with fiber dispersion mitigation provided by optical single sideband modulation techniques. Besides discussing the network architecture we focus on the intermodulation effects arising from the nonlinear characteristics of the optical modulator and the reflective semiconductor optical amplifier.