Long-reach 60-GHz MMWoF link with free-running laser diodes beating

Abstract

With the remote beating of two mutually incoherent laser carriers, the local-oscillator-free long-reach millimeter-wave over fiber (MMWoF) link at 60-GHz band is demonstrated. The unique schemes of the proposed MMWoF are the wavelength-locked colorless laser diode (CLD) modulator, the mutually incoherent optical carrier for heterodyne MMW generation, and the square-law power envelope detection at receiving end. By directly encoding the single-mode with the CLD modulator, the singlecarrier modulated QAM-OFDM data is achieved to release the RF power fading after fiber transmission. The mutually incoherent laser beating enables the optical heterodyne MMW generation with two independent optical carriers, which provides the advantages of local-oscillator-free operation and rules out the requirement of dual-mode optical carrier delivery from central office. At the wireless receiving end, the received QAM-OFDM data is self-down-converted to the baseband by employing the square-law power envelope detection. This eliminates the requirement of local oscillator and rules out the influence of the MMW carrier frequency fluctuation between two mutually incoherent lasers (used at central office and remote node), which effectively provides the MMW carrier immunity against the down-conversion instability caused by clock jitter or carrier incoherence. This architecture ensures the transmission of 16.5-Gbit/s 32-QAM OFDM data over 50 km in SMF and 3 m in free-space with the FEC certificated error vector magnitude of 12%, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 18.4 dB, and bit error rate of 3.8 x 10(-3). For multi-channel DWDM-PON applications, the proposed local-oscillator-free MMWoF link can successfully perform 11 DWDM channels of 32-QAM OFDM data access at 16.5 Gbit/s per channel via the wavelength controlling of the CLD modulation stage and the detuning of the beating carrier at remote node.