Remote downconversion with wavelength reuse for the radio/fiber uplink connection

The authors present a novel technology for uplink transmission in radio-over-fiber distribution systems. The technique employs remote downconversion of the uplink data to intermediate frequency (IF) in the base station (BS). The local oscillator signal for the downconversion is optically generated in the central station (CS) and sent to the BS via optical fiber. The IF uplink data is then modulated onto an optical carrier, retrieved from the downlink signal, and sent to the CS, where the baseband conversion takes place. By employing this method of uplink connection, simplicity and cost efficiency of the BS is achieved