Bidirectional Relaying MMW Radio over Plastic Optical Fiber Systems in Home Area Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel home area networks (HAN) architecture using MMW radio-over-plastic optical fiber (MMW/RoPOF) to provide high-speed wireless connections to end users. The proposed HAN can support bidirectional half-duplex communication between any pair of mobile stations (MSs) thanks to the use of analog network coding in optical domain implemented at a center station (CS). We analyze the performance of an end-to-end communication link between two MSs under the impact of major physical impairments originated from both fiber and wireless links. The numerical results in terms of bit error rate (BER) and normalized throughput demonstrate that it is feasible to deploy MMW/RoPOF in HAN. In addition, useful information for the design of HAN can be obtained from this paper.Index Terms-Home area networks (HANs), millimeter-wave (MMW) communication, radio-over-fiber (RoF), plastic optical fiber (POF), analog network coding.