Radio over Fiber for Broadband Communications

Abstract

The high capacity offered by the optical fiber, combined with the mobility and the flexibility of wireless access, either fixed or not, provides an efficient approach to alleviating the requirements posed by the envisaged provision of any-service, anytime and anywhere, next generation communication networks. The objective of this chapter is to present an overview of Radio-over-Fiber technology, as an emerging infrastructure for next generation, fiber-based, wireless access broadband networking. In particular, the fundamental concept of Radio-over-Fiber technology is reviewed and the partial components comprising it are discussed. Furthermore, the associated architectures are depicted and a short literature survey of trends and applications is considered.