Nonlinearity Detection and Compensation in Radio over Fiber Systems Using a Monitoring Channel

A radio over fiber (RoF) system is a kind of analog optical transmission system and considered as a strong candidate for the next-generation fronthaul link in the future mobile network. In RoF systems, nonlinearity compensation is essential to increase the link capacity. In this paper, we propose a nonlinearity detection and compensation scheme using a monitoring channel in RoF systems. A monitoring channel is added at the transmitter site and used for transmitting a reference signal in an RoF transmission. The nonlinearity in the RoF transmission is detected by comparing the received monitoring signal and the original reference signal at the receiver site. Finally, the nonlinearity is compensated at the receiver by giving the reverse function of the detected nonlinearity. Our results show that the proposed scheme can almost remove the error vector magnitude degradation induced by the nonlinearity in the RoF system.