Linearity Measurements on a 5G mmWave Fiber Wireless IFoF Fronthaul Link with analog RF beamforming and 120° degrees steering

Towards the 5G millimeter Wave (mmWave) era, analog transport offers a spectrally efficient scheme for converged Fiber Wireless (FiWi) networks. Signal integrity is traditionally considered as a limiting factor due to various non-linearities attributed to the microwave photonic link, expected to be further exacerbated by the RF-chain of beamforming Phased Array Antennas (PAAs). The letter proposes the end-to-end evaluation of FiWi analog links as unified communication channels rather than separately for the radio or optical part, presenting a link with a 32-element 60 GHz PAA, 1 m V-band distance, 10 km fiber and 10 dB dynamic range. The measurements reveal a third order Intercept Point (IIP3) of 4.8 dBm, compared to 22.8 dBm exclusively for the optics, pinpointing the V-band radio as the main source of degradation rather than the microwave photonic link. Single user uplink is also benchmarked using 300 Mbd QPSK, 250 16-QAM and 100 Mbd 32-QAM, achieving data-rate up to 1 Gb/s and beamsteering of 120° degrees.