A 100 Gbps OFDM-Based 28 GHz Millimeter-Wave Radio over Fiber Fronthaul System for 5G

Due to the unprecedented growth in mobile data traffic, emerging mobile access networks such as fifth-generation (5G) would require huge bandwidth and a mobile fronthaul architecture as an essential solution in providing a high capacity for support in the future. To increase capacity, utilizing millimeter waves (mm-waves) in an analog radio over fiber (RoF) fronthaul link is the major advancement and solution in achieving higher bandwidth and high data rate to cater for 5G mobile communication. In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of transmission and reception of a 100 Gbits/s data rate link at 28 GHz. The performance of three modulation formats (16-PSK, 16-QAM and 64-QAM) have been compared for an optical fiber length from 5 km up to 35 km for two detection systems; coherent and direct detection. Also, in this paper, the transmission impairments inherent to transmission systems are realized through the implementation of a digital signal processing (DSP) compensation scheme in the receiver system to enhance system performance. Quality factor (QF) and bit error rate (BER) are used as metrics to evaluate the system performance. The proposed system model is designed and simulated using Optisystem 16.