Photonics-Assisted Technologies for Extreme Broadband 5G Wireless Communications

We summarize the enabling technologies for photonics-assisted broadband millimeter-wave (mm-wave) communication, which is a promising candidate for the enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) communications, one of the three main typical application scenarios of 5G wireless networks. These enabling technologies, mainly focusing on the improvement of the system structure, include broadband mm-wave signal generation with simple and cost-effective schemes, multiple-input multiple-output architecture with polarization-multiplexing optical mm-wave signal, advanced multilevel modulation, optical or electrical multicarrier modulation, antenna polarization multiplexing and the employment of the high-gain mm-wave antenna, multi-band multiplexing, and broadband mm-wave signal detection. We also review the advanced digital signal processing (DSP) for heterodyne coherent detection, which can be applied into the photonics-assisted mm-wave communication systems, to further enhance the system performance for a given system structure and certain available devices. Based on these enabling technologies and advanced DSP, we have realized over 1 Tb/s wireless signal transmission at D-band and over 2.5 km wireless transmission with a bit rate up to 54 Gb/s at W-band. Our work verifies the photonics-assisted broadband mm-wave communication can meet the high-data-rate demand of eMBB.