Affiliation:
1. University College London, UK
Abstract
There is a continuous demand for increasing wireless access broadband services to the end users, especially with widespread high quality mobile devices. The Internet mobile applications and multimedia services are constantly hungry for broadband wireless bandwidth. In order to overcome this bandwidth limitation, a frequency band (57-64 GHz) has recently been assigned for short range indoor wireless broadband signals due to the large available bandwidth. However, the transmission at this band is limited to a few meters due to the high atmospheric absorption loss. Radio over Fiber (RoF) technology was considered an efficient solution to extend the distribution range and wireless capacity services. This chapter presents an introduction to RoF technology and its basic required optical components for indoor short range wireless millimeter waves (mm-waves). The limiting factors of RoF and its impairments are also described. Moreover, optical mm-wave generation solutions are explained and followed by the recent optical 60GHz activities and upcoming research areas such as THz and optical wireless.