Wideband Differential Fed Patch Antenna for Radio Over Fiber Systems

Mm-wave bands have been explored for high-capacity wireless systems. Despite the fact that optical technologies can contribute to generate and transport such signals, the electrical front-ends for the mm-wave transceivers are still overlooked. Radio over fiber (RoF) and reconfigurable antenna technologies have been used to achieve the requirements of modern telecommunications networks. Allowing the convergence of wired and wireless services, the RoF technology can satisfy the use of the huge bandwidth offered by optical communications systems with the mobility and flexibility provided by wireless systems. In this paper, we aim to design an original wideband differential fed patch antenna for mm-wave radio over fiber communications with more than 4 GHz bandwidth and 5 dBi gain at 26 GHz band. The proposed circuit is the elementary cell of a reconfigurable antenna array that will be designed for the future generation of RoF systems.