Adaptive photonic-assisted M²-QAM millimeter-wave synthesis in multi-antenna radio-over-fiber system using M-ASK modulation

A novel method for generating an adaptive photonic-assisted M²-quadrature amplitude modulation (M²-QAM) millimeter-wave signal in a multiantenna radio-over-fiber system using M-ray amplitude-shift keying (M-ASK) modulation is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. It takes full advantage of high-density small cells without introducing additional complexity into remote antenna units (RAUs) or mobile users. The 4, 8, and 12 Gb/s 4QAM millimeter-wave signals are obtained from two independent 2, 4, and 6 Gb/s on-off-keying 40 GHz channels, respectively. The experimental results show that a double bit rate can be received without additional digital signal processing in RAUs and mobile users. The results, including the constellation diagrams and bit error rate, show that the transmitted signals are received successfully.