Two-level modulation scheme to reduce latency for optical mobile fronthaul networks

Abstract

A system using optical two-level orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing (OFDM) -amplitude-shift-keying (ASK) modulation is proposed and demonstrated to reduce the processing latency for the optical mobile fronthaul networks. At the proposed remote-radio- head (RRH), the high data rate OFDM signal does not need to be processed, but is directly launched into a high speed photodiode (HSPD) and subsequently emitted by an antenna. Only a low bandwidth PD is needed to recover the low data rate ASK control signal. Hence, it is simple and provides low-latency. Furthermore, transporting the proposed system over the already deployed optical-distribution-networks (ODNs) of passive-optical-networks (PONs) is also demonstrated with 256 ODN split-ratios. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America