Open AccessExperimental demonstration of plastic optical fibre‐based digitised radio over fibre downlink
Author(s) -
Thomas V.A.,
Liu D.,
ElHajjar M.,
Hanzo L.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
electronics letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.375
H-Index - 146
eISSN - 1350-911X
pISSN - 0013-5194
DOI - 10.1049/el.2015.2762
Subject(s) - optical fiber , telecommunications link , computer science , materials science , telecommunications
Fibre links that are a few hundreds of metres long are needed for in‐building networks. However, the transmission of radio‐frequency (RF) signals through low‐cost, easily installable plastic optical fibre (POF) is severely limited by their bandwidth‐length products. Digitised radio over fibre (DROF) converts the RF signal into a baseband signal through bandpass sampling prior to its transmission, thereby reducing the fibre bandwidth required for the RF signal's transmission. For the first time , a POF‐based DROF link relying on the Ethernet protocol is proposed and the initial experimental results for a link that employs a 143 m long step‐index POF and uncoded RF modulation are presented. A 5 GHz RF signal through the POF is transmitted. The same method can be employed for higher RF carriers as well. The RF bit rate was ∼30% of the protocol‐dependent DROF bit rate.