UWB Radio-over-Fiber System Using Direct Modulated VCSEL

Abstract

The demand for efficient and cost-effective transmission and distribution of RF signal is increasing with the rapid development of wireless communication. This thesis studies the effect of using cost-effective vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) to distribute ultra wide band (UWB) RF signal. Properties of multimode and single mode VCSEL are studied and simulated using commercial optical design suite. One of the biggest drawbacks of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) used by UWB is high peak to average power ratio (PAPR). Signal pre-distortion method is proposed to mitigate nonlinear effect from VCSEL optical system. Software connector is implemented to interconnect the Optical and Wireless design suite. Integrated VCSEL optical link and UWB simulation is carried out for the performance of the radio-on-fiber (RoF) system. The RoF system with optimized single mode VCSEL and proposed pre-distortion method is found to be capable of distributing UWB RF signal.