World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology 56 2009

Radio over Fiber as a Cost Effective Technology

for Transmission of WiMAX Signals
Mohammad Shaifur Rahman, Jung Hyun Lee, Youngil Park, and Ki-Doo Kim

The use of centrally located BS hostel that connect several

Abstract—In this paper, an overview of the radio over fiber remote antenna units (RAU) via lossless optical fiber link
(RoF) technology is provided. Obstacles for reducing the capital and dramatically reduces costs associated with site acquisition, site
operational expenses in the existing systems are discussed in various leasing, and energy consumption. In addition, allowing several
perspectives. Some possible RoF deployment scenarios for WiMAX
remote antenna sites to be controlled by one central BS offers
data transmission are proposed as a means for capital and operational
expenses reduction. IEEE 802.16a standard based end-to-end more rapid and more scalable network deployment. As a
physical layer model is simulated including intensity modulated result, interest has been grown on radio over fiber (RoF)
direct detection RoF technology. Finally the feasibility of RoF systems, which employ analog fiber optic links to transport
technology to carry WiMAX signals between the base station and the radio frequency (RF) signals between BSs and RAUs. These
remote antenna units is demonstrated using the simulation results. have potential advantages in allowing transmission of WiMAX
signals in their raw form to antennas at which no RF signal
Keywords—IMDD, Radio over Fiber, Remote Antenna Unit, processing beyond amplification is required, which leads to a
WiMAX.
simplification of the transmission equipment. Since laser
I. INTRODUCTION diodes of bandwidth of 7 GHz are now readily available,
directly modulated semiconductor lasers and single mode fiber
W IRELESS operators are increasingly challenged to
accommodate a great diversity of data oriented mobile
services and the growing number of end users. To meet the
(SMF) are preferred for most wireless standards (GSM, WiFi
802.11 a/b/g, UMTS, or WiMAX) due to low transmission
losses, engineering simplicity and low cost. Research on
higher data rate, WiMAX is a key and promising technology transmission of radio signals for various standards has been
for the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an carried out by several research groups and some significant
alternative to wired broadband like cable and DSL. WiMAX results are reported in [1]-[3]. Our present study focuses on the
provides fixed, nomadic, portable and mobile wireless aspects of the wireless broadband system deployment, where
broadband connectivity. The technology provides up to 3 there are still some stones to be turned to reduce the capital
Mbps broadband speed without the need for cables which is and operational expenses. In the following sections, we discuss
sufficiently enough bandwidth to simultaneously support about some problems associated with the conventional BSs
hundreds of businesses with T-1 speed connectivity and and potentiality of RoF technology to carry WiMAX
thousands of residences with DSL speed connectivity. Along broadband wireless data cost efficiently.
with providing the ever-increasing traffic demands, the
operators must find ways to reduce capital and operational II. RADIO OVER FIBER TECHNOLOGIES
expenses of the networks. In response to the cost issue, some
major architectural trends such as distributed base station (BS) The use of optical fiber links to distribute RF signals from a
central BS to multiple RAUs is the basis of RoF technology.
or BS hostelling are beginning to emerge as enablers for
RF signal processing functions such as frequency up-
reduced-cost, next-generation wireless access networks. The
conversion, carrier modulation, and multiplexing are
expansion in broadband radio services like WiMAX, has also
performed at the BS, and immediately fed into the antenna.
led to a renewed focus on the optimum network infrastructure RoF makes it possible to centralize the RF signal processing
capable of transmitting signals between BSs and antennas. functions in one shared location and then to use optical fiber to
distribute the RF signals to the RAUs. In this way, the RAUs
Mohammad Shaifur Rahman is with the Department of Electronics are simplified significantly, as they only need to perform
Engineering, Kookmin University, Seoul, Republic of Korea, on leave from optoelectronic conversion and amplification functions. The
Khulna University of Engineering and Technology, Khulna, Bangladesh (e- key advantages of analog optical links are the reduced
mail: [email protected]). complexity of the transmission equipment close to the
Jung Hyun Lee is with the Dept. of Electronics Engineering, Kookmin
University, Seoul, Republic of Korea (e-mail: [email protected]). antennas, a minimized visual impact of these equipments, and
Youngil Park is with the Department of Electronics Engineering, Kookmin lower operational costs of the network due to infrastructure
University, Seoul, Republic of Korea (e-mail: [email protected]). sharing among different BSs. The deployment of optical fiber
Ki-Doo Kim is with the Department of Electronics Engineering, Kookmin technology in wireless networks provides great potential for
University, Seoul, Republic of Korea (phone: 82-2-910-4707; fax: 82-2-910-
4645; e-mail: [email protected]). increasing the capacity and QoS without largely occupying

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additional radio spectrum. By using RoF technology, the

capacity of optical networks can be combined with the
flexibility and mobility of wireless access networks.
Transportation of radio signals over fiber can be done in
several ways. The simplest way is to modulate the light
intensity of the optical source directly by the radio signal. At
the remote antenna site, photodetector and bandpass amplifier
converts the received optical signal to radio signal to be
radiated by the antenna. This technique is termed as intensity
modulated direct detection (IMDD). However, large
bandwidth and linearity is required for the laser transmitter and
the receiver. Also compensation techniques for fiber
dispersion may be needed at higher RF frequencies and longer
fiber lengths. Thus the intensity-modulation scheme is
restricted to the low/medium RF range. Alternatively, optical
frequency conversion can be done to generate the microwave
signal at the remote antenna site. For the frequency
conversion, two narrow-linewidth laser diodes can be
deployed, one of which is intensity modulated with the data
signal. The optical frequency spacing between these two lasers
is carefully kept equal to the desired microwave frequency. Fig. 1 In building deployment scenario of WiMAX over RoF
After traveling through the fiber link, the heterodyning of the
two optical signals in the photodiode generates the modulated the RAUs using RoF. The antenna units have to do the simple
microwave carrier. However, the linewidth of the microwave
optical-to-electrical conversion, and to emit and receive the
signal is equal to the sum of the linewidths of the two laser
wireless signal. Centralizing the sophisticated signal handling
diodes, and may exceed the requirements for adequate
process can bring many advantages in operating, maintaining
detection of the usually multilevel signal modulation format
(such as multi-level QAM). Hence the linewidth of the laser and upgrading wireless networks. In WiMAX service
diodes needs to be very small, which is achievable by injection provisioning, several approaches can be taken to utilize the
locking. A second option of optical frequency conversion benefits of RoF. Two particular deployment scenarios are
method uses just a single laser followed by a Mach Zehnder given in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2. Fig. 1 shows indoor WiMAX cells,
Interferometer (MZI) modulator which is biased at its inflexion inside the residential buildings, offices, underground subways,
point ( vπ ) and is driven by a sinusoidal signal at half the tunnels, or shadowed areas, are served by the distributed
desired microwave frequency [4]. At the MZI’s output, a two- antenna systems, where the RAUs are fed by WiMAX over
tone optical signal emerges with a tone spacing equal to the
microwave frequency, and with suppressed optical carrier.
When modulating the laser with the data signal, heterodyning
in the photodiode at the receiver generates the modulated
microwave signal. This method suppresses the phase noise of
the laser diode, and hence creates a clean microwave.
However, among the above optical transmission techniques,
IMDD is the simplest design and lowest cost. In the next
section, RoF deployment scenarios are discussed where
WiMAX data are transmitted through the fiber using simple
IMDD.

III. ROF DEPLOYMENT SCENARIO

Rapidly increasing demand for broadband services like high
speed internet access and mobile multimedia forcing towards
smaller radio cell size. Smaller cells imply that more antennas
are needed to cover a certain area. Such an area may include
the rooms in a residential home, a hospital, an office building,
an airport lounge, or a conference site, etc. When it needs so
many antenna sites, it becomes economically attractive to
locate the microwave signal generation and modulation at a
central BS from where the radio signals will be transmitted to Fig. 2 Base station hostelling

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fiber links from the WiMAX BS via a control station. BS

hostelling can be another cost reducing deployment of RoF as
shown in Fig. 2, where multiple macro cells are covered by a
central BS and RoF links are used to feed the antenn in each
cell. This type of deployment scenario results in lower capital
and operational cost for the service providers.
Fig. 3 IEEE 802.16a model with RoF implemented using Simulink
IV. COST EFFECTIVENESS OF ROF
Conventional BS drives the antennas over lossy electrical photodetector. The signal is then amplified and radiated by the
cable which necessitates the location of the BS very close to antenna. The Uplink signal is transmitted from the RAU to the
the antennas. This can create problems with acquiring suitable BS in a similar way.
sites for coverage extension. It also increases the capital and
operational expenses due to site purchasing or leasing, new BS VI. LASER AND PHOTODIODE MODEL
installation and maintenance. Utilizing the idea of RoF and BS
hostelling, one BS can control several RAUs and new BS is The laser is usually a significant source of noise and
not required for coverage extension. The additional antennas distortion in an ROF link, and laser diode normally exhibits
can be served from the existing BS close to the cell tower. nonlinear behavior. When it is driven well above its threshold
This dramatically reduces the requirements for cell site current, its input/output relationship can be modeled by a
footprint and the cost of site acquisition. Volterra series of order 3 [6]. However, if the signal current
The electrical cables that drive the antenna are responsible dynamic range is within the linear region of the laser diode, it
for large amount power loss of the BS. The loss in these cables obviously will show linear response. In our present simulation
and their associated connectors can range from a typical value we assume ideal linear characteristic of the laser diode. Output
of 3db to as much as 10dB in extreme cases which means 50% optical power versus current can be given as:
to 90% of the radio transceiver’s output power is dissipated in Popt ( I ) = ( hf / e)η L ( I (t ) − I th ) (1)
cable transmission [5]. All this extra power required to drive
the electrical feeder cables means that higher output power where I (t ) is input current of the microwave signal including
amplifiers must be deployed. These high power amplifiers are the dc bias, I th is diode threshold current, h is Planck
more expensive and have poor operating efficiencies of around constant, f is frequency in hertz, e is charge of an electron,
10%, further compounding the problem of high energy
consumption by BS. By feeding the RAUs with optical fiber, and η L is laser quantum efficiency [6]. The detection of
transmission to the antenna location can be made virtually transmitted lightwaves is performed primarily by the
almost loss-free except some small amount of loss in the short photodetector. In most cases the received optical signal is
electrical cable connections between the RAUs and the quite weak and thus electronic amplification circuitry is used,
antennas. following the photodiode, to ensure that an optimized power
In the conventional BS, the power dissipated as heat by the signal-to-noise (SNR) is achieved. The PIN photodiode and
low-efficiency amplifiers requires the BS enclosure to have receiver total noise are calculated and superimposed over the
sophisticated metal enclosures with climate control facilities ideal photodiode signal current. To evaluate the effect of noise
such as air conditioning, which also increases the expenses. added during the amplification process, a mathematical model
RoF offers large reduction in the amount of thermal energy explained in [7] has been used in our simulation. The noise in
dissipated by the system. This means that the RAU can be photodiode includes quantum shot noise ish , dark current
designed without the need for any expensive climate control
facilities at the remote site. In addition, the BS hostel can be noise idk , and the thermal noise ith . The total current generated
installed in the more benign environmental conditions of an by the photodiode when optical power falls on it is expressed
indoor facility. From the above discussion, it is clear that RoF
technology has lots of possibilities to reduce the capital and by: itotal = isig + inoise 2 (2)
operational expenses. In order to check the feasibility of
transmission of IEEE 802.16a based WiMAX data through where mean squared noise inoise 2 = ish 2 + idk 2 + ith 2 .
optical fiber link, we have done the simulation study. It has been demonstrated that both the shot noise and dark
current noise contributions from the bulk material of the
V. IEEE802.16A PHYSICAL LAYER SIMULATION MODEL photodiode follow a Poisson process, and is thus random. For
Fig. 3 below depicts the Physical layer of 802.16a and a that reason the mean squared of these noise sources are
classical IMDD optical link model for transmitting the signal considered for the calculations. The noise sources can be
to RAU. The laser diode is modulated by the RF signal in the expressed mathematically as follows:
downlink path. The resulting intensity modulated optical signal
i sh 2 = 2qI sig B , idk 2 = 2qI dk B , ith 2 = (4 K B TB / R)
is then transmitted through the single mode fiber towards a
RAU. At the RAU end, the received optical signal is converted where I dk = 25nA, is assumed to be dark current obtained
to RF signal by direct detection through a PIN from the DSC10H PIN photodiode datasheet of

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Semiconductor.Inc, B is the photodiode 3dB bandwidth, K B is

Boltzmann’s constant, T is the absolute temperature (ºK), and 0.1
R is the photodiode load resistor assumed to be 50 ohm for
ultra wideband receiver. 0.01

Bit Error Rate

A total normalized mean squared noise is found to be
4.44 ×10 −4 . In order to ensure the accurate recovery of data, 1E-3
amplification of photodiode current is essential which
incorporates additional noise. For this amplification, a noise 1E-4
gain of 11% of the maximum current is added to the current
waveform. This amplifier also contributes a 33dB gain which 1E-5
translates to a power gain of 44.67. 16 17 18 19 20 21
Signal to Noise Ratio [dB]
VII. SIMULATION RESULTS
In order to study the feasibility of transmission of WiMAX Fig. 4 Bit error rate Vs signal to noise ratio with 64QAM modulation
and ¾ coding with transmit diversity
signals through single mode fiber by IMDD, the simulation
was carried out using Simulink model. The simulink model
consisted of IEEE 802.16a end-to-end physical layer. More
specifically, it modeled the OFDM-based physical layer for
downlink, supporting all of the mandatory coding and
modulation options. It also consisted the option of using space 0.1
time block coding (STBC) for providing transmit diversity.
Bit Error Rate

The laser and photodiode are modeled using (1) and (2),
respectively. The parameters and configurations of the IEEE 0.01
802.16a physical layer that are used for the simulation, are
listed in Table I.
1E-3
TABLE I
SIMULATION PARAMETERS AND CONFIGURATIONS
Parameter/Configuration Value 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40
Channel bandwidth 3.5 MHz Signal to Noise Ratio [dB]
Number of OFDM symbols per burst 2
Cyclix prefix factor 1/8 Fig. 5 Bit error rate Vs signal to noise ratio with 64 QAM modulation
Forward error correction code Convolutional and ¾ coding without transmission diversity
at rates ½ and ¾
Modulation QPSK, 16-QAM, 64-QAM
OFDM 192 sub carriers, 8 pilots, and VIII. CONCLUSION
256 point FFT Objective of this study was to investigate RoF technology
Space time block coding Alamouti’s scheme
Channel AWGN
for the transmission of WiMAX signals to the RAUs and
hence to suggest feasible RoF deployment scenarios to reduce
Fading Rayleigh
the capital and operational expenses of the service providers.
After detailed study, some factors responsible for increasing
Fig. 4 show the simulation results for bit error rate Vs the cost such as installation of large number of BSs, loss in
different SNR values. Result for 64-QAM with ¾ coding rate electrical cables, climate control in BSs etc. are identified. In
is shown here only. Transmit diversity was also provided. It is order to solve these problems, RoF can be a promising
seen from the figure that BER is decreased with increasing the technology. With the concept of BS hostelling and indoor
SNR. At SNR value of 21, BER is found to be 6.018 ×10 −5 . WiMAX cells, RoF can be a cost efficient enabling technology
BER Vs SNR results for 64-QAM and ¾ coding rate and for WiMAX broadband service.
without transmit diversity are show in Fig. 5. Here, similar
behavior is obtained as before. However, BER performance is ACKNOWLEDGMENT
found to be better in case of transmit diversity is added. These This work was supported by the Basic Science Program
results imply that RoF can be a successful enabling technology [R01-2008-20570-0] of Korea Science & Engineering
for transmitting WiMAX data. Foundation.

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