Performance Appraisal of Sigma Delta Modulated Radio over Fiber System

Abstract Radio over fiber (RoF) is a promising solution for the next-generation wireless networks including fifth-generation Cloud/Centralized Radio Access Network (C-RAN). There exists a possibility to use Sigma Delta Modulated RoF (S-DRoF) that combines the advantages of analog RoF and digital RoF by means of sigma delta modulation (SDM) at the transmitter side subsequently replacing the employment of expensive and high-speed digital-to-analog converters. In this paper, we demonstrate the usage of second-order SDM for LTE 20 MHz signal having 64 QAM modulation on a central carrier frequency of 1.14 GHz for the implementation of S-DRoF for 20 km of standard single mode fiber with baud rate from 25 to 100 Mbaud. Furthermore, a comprehensive analysis of the design of SDM is explained followed by the experimental setup. The performance is reported in terms of error vector magnitude, constellations and adjacent channel power ratio. The results show that the proposed architecture performance is in with accordance to the limitations set by the 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) standards and is a reasonable choice either for upgrading installed systems as well as for the new deployments.