Design and Prototype Implementation of Software-Defined Radio Over Fiber

Abstract

Future networks require a high degree of flexibility over wide areas to enable many services that require higher quality wireless networks such as remote control of cars and remote surgery. Therefore, the network technology must combine high capacity, low latency, and flexibility. To deal with these requirements, we developed Software-Defined Radio over Fiber (SD-RoF), which is an architecture that tightly couples light and radio at a low cost. SD-RoF offers the following two key features: elastic wireless service and elastic bidirectional passthrough. The elastic wireless service provides users with access to wireless services that they need at any time in any place. The elastic bidirectional passthrough connects two remotely located points via RoF through radio waves and enables allowing for bidirectional radio communication between devices at each location. In this study, we design and prototype implementation of SD-RoF, and conduct a basic evaluation of the implemented circuit and demonstration experiments on elastic bidirectional passthrough. Through demonstration experiments, we found the feasibility and the challenges of SD-RoF. In addition, the deployment of SD-RoF, application scenarios, and operational issues are discussed.