Digitized radio-over-fiber transceivers for SDM/WDM back-/front-haul

In this paper we analyze the perspective of digitized radio over fiber (DRoF) fronthaul, showing how to meet the requirements to cope with the future radio access networks (RANs). This entails the introduction of space division multiplexing (SDM) while increasing the flexibility and capacity of the DRoF transceivers.Since the evolution of the DRoF fronthaul is being revised and re-defined, in the blueSPACE project we propose two different DRoF transceiver options. The first option consists on simple transceiver, based on the recent standard specifications and, therefore, expected to be deployed in the short-term. The second options is a more advanced transceiver that features high flexibility, relying on a strong DSP and targeting a long-term deployment. Besides a basic characterization of both solutions, we also analyze additional aspects related to the design and implementation of these two DRoF solutions and their integration into an SDM based RAN. This includes the programmability and interaction with the control plane.