Digital Radio over Fiber System in the NG-PON2 context

TLDR: In this article, the performance of a low-cost digital radio over fiber (DRoF) system in a single channel and in coexistence scenario is investigated by means of simulation, and the results show that the DRoF system is compatible with a NG-PON2 with respect to the wavelength plan and bandwidth requirements.

Abstract: The current trends on traffic and mobile user's  growth is pushing the capacity of the current networks to the limit, which has led telecommunication operators to expand their investment in infrastructure. In this context, centralized RAN (C-RAN) comes with an innovative solution for the changes that will occur in the network. C-RAN shifts all the complex functionalities from the base stations (BS) to the central office (CO). A new segment called fronthaul connects the base band unit (BBU) with the remote antenna over a digital radio over fiber (DRoF) transmission based on the common public radio interface (CPRI). In this work we propose and investigate, by means of simulation, the performance of the low cost DRoF system in several contexts: single channel and in coexistence scenario. To meet this goal, we first investigate the key aspects of DRoF in an isolated transmission and next we proceed with a coexistence scenario based on the ITU-T G.989 standard (NG-PON2). The results show that the DRoF system is compatible with a NG-PON2 with respect to the wavelength plan and bandwidth requirements.