Radio-Over-Fiber Enabled Evaluation of Coverage and Capacity in Indoor mmWave Communication

Recent advances in mobile networks increasingly rely on high-frequency bands such as millimeter-wave (mmWave) to deliver multi-gigabit data rates. Photonics-assisted wireless technology further enhances system performance with ultra-high bandwidth, large capacity, and extended reach. This paper experimentally verifies an indoor WiFi coverage system supported by Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) based on an omnidirectional antenna, systematically testing the WiFi communication characteristics of 60 GHz millimeter waves in complex indoor environments. Comparative experiments were conducted in line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) scenarios, with extensive empirical measurements and performance evaluations performed at 25 different indoor receiving locations. Experimental results demonstrate that the RoF-supported millimeter-wave WiFi architecture possesses good coverage capabilities and communication feasibility in complex indoor environments. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic experimental verification of the feasibility of millimeter-wave WiFi coverage in a real-world complex indoor scenario, providing a practically valuable reference solution for high-capacity, high-speed indoor wireless access towards future the sixth generation (6G).