Hybrid access network integrated with wireless multilevel vector and wired baseband signals using frequency doubling and no optical filtering

This letter experimentally demonstrated a hybrid access network which supports both radio-over-fiber and fiber-to-the-x systems. A 20-GHz radio-frequency (RF) 312.5-MSymbol/s M-ary phase-shift keying (PSK) signal and a baseband (BB) 1.25-Gb/s on-off keying signal are simultaneously generated and transmitted over an identical distributed infrastructure. The wired BB signal is compatible with the existing passive optical network (PON) system, and the wireless RF PSK signal can also share the same distributed infrastructure. The proposed system has no RF fading issue, no narrowband optical filter at remote node to separate the RF and BB signals, and can carry vector signals. Moreover, a frequency doubling for optical RF signal generation is achieved to reduce the bandwidth requirement of the transmitter. After transmission over 25-km standard signal-mode fiber, the receiver sensitivity penalties are less than 0.5 dB for both the RF and BB channels.