MIMO-enabled integrated MGDM–WDM distributed antenna system architecture based on plastic optical fibers for millimeter-wave communication

Design of a low-cost fiber–wireless communication architecture is desirable by network operators. Therefore, we demonstrate the transmission of \(2 \times 2\) MIMO spatial streams, each having 2 Gbps DPSK signal to two different radio access units (RAUs) in a distributed antenna system architecture. The proposed architecture employs mode group division multiplexing in combination with wavelength division multiplexing to transport RF DPSK signals centered at 10 GHz. The RF signals are used to modulate optical carriers that are centered at 1300 nm and transmitted toward the RAUs over perfluorinated graded-index plastic optical fiber. Heterodyne detection is performed at the RAUs to transmit mm-wave signals at 60 GHz to the end users. Furthermore, wireline access is also achieved at each RAU to support simplex services. A cost-efficient multiple wavelength source is generated from a single laser by employing a dual-drive Mach–Zehnder modulator. An increase in multiplexing gain is achieved using the two LP modes, LP01 and LP11, of each generated wavelength. The proposed architecture gives acceptable BER results for practical implementation.