Multiple beam-steering for 5G multi-user MIMO mobile fronthaul based on IFoF and RoF transmission

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This paper describes the potential of analog radio-over-fiber (RoF) and intermediate-frequency-over-fiber (IFoF) transmission technology for the future mobile fronthaul (MFH). The background and approach of the analog RoF-based MFH combined with the beamforming technique are presented. We developed an antenna module by integrating sixteen sets of cascaded photodiode, RF amplifier and a patch antenna as a compact wireless transmitter. Three millimeter-wave (MMW) beams were successfully transmitted from the antenna module with beam separation of 30° by photonic controlled beam steering. The experimental results are presented to show the feasibility of a multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) scenario.