Use of a Reflective Electro-Absorption Modulator and Semiconductor Optical Amplifier for Converged Wireless over Fiber Access Networks

We report for the first time transmission results of RoF WiMax OFDM-QAM IEEE 802.16d signals on one wavelength using REAM-SOA device. This device is demonstrated to be linear and does not disturb the RF signal. Introduction The flexibility and mobility of broadband wireless access technologies (WiMax, Wi-Fi, WMAN, LTE, indoor) associated to the deployment of FTTH have generated lot of studies in the last few years. There is a real desire to merge the wireless and wire networks into a single shared infrastructure maintaining cost comparable to the today's one [1]. Past experimental demonstrations have been done on Radio-Over Fiber (RoF), using RSOA and DML [2] [3] or REAT+Vcsels [4] but not yet with newer Remote Amplified Modulators also called Reflective ElectroAbsorption Modulator and Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (RAM or REAM-SOA). First studies have been carried out on REAM-SOA [5] [6] [7] for fixed access based on WDM Passive Optical Network (PON) which has allowed achieving colourless and uncooled performances at 10 Gbit/s. Having a large available bandwidth, these devices are thought to allow fixed+mobile access convergence basing on a single type optical unit compatible with different colourless WDM-PON architectures [5]. Therefore it is interesting to study REAM-SOA modulation in the RoF context. In this report we present what is believed to be the first demonstration of Wimax RoF transport using an integrated REAM-SOA device. It uses light from an optical source in the CU (central Unit) and therefore does not require an optical source in the RAU (Remote Access Unit).