Radio Over Plastic Optical Fiber Transmission for Short-Range Future Networks

This paper evaluates the feasibility of Radioover-Plastic Optical Fiber (RoPOF) technology for LTE and Internet of Things (IoT) service providing in future short-range communication networks. In particular, we have focused on the downlink transmission of 10-MHz LTE and Narrow-Band IoT (NB-IoT) in guardband operation mode over a carrier frequency of 800 MHz. By selecting the proper components and transmission parameters, the impact of the input power and the relative power of NB-IoT to LTE over the Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) has been experimentally analyzed for both signals. For this purpose, a RoPOF communication link using a 75-meter Graded-index POF (GI-POF) has been established, while the main signal processing tasks as modulation/ demodulation and EVM estimation are performed offline. Results show that transmission performance meets the standard quality for both signals using a wide range of input powers. Additionally, the use of the LTE guardband for NB-IoT transmission hardly affects its quality indicating the strength of this spectrally-efficient solution.