Digitized Radio-Over-Fiber Technologies for Converged Optical Wireless Access Network

With the rapid deployment of optical access networks and the growing availability of mature and cost-effective opto-electronic system technologies, a unified optical feeder network could provide seamless integration of both broadband optical and wireless access networks. Radio-over-fiber transmission has been studied extensively as a way of achieving such high levels of network integration as well as simplifying wireless base-stations. Digitized radio-over-fiber has recently been reported as a possible cost-effective pathway for achieving this by taking advantage of parallel developments in electronic sampling systems and signal processing. In this paper, we present a review of recent progress in key systems and network technologies that can support the distribution of multi-band wireless signals in a converged optical wireless access network.