Radio-over-fiber is a key technology in the development of 5G/6G communications, offering the capability to support high-capacity low-latency wireless networks. A key component in RoF is the remote radio unit (RRU). As the trend to deploy RoF at mm-wave and THz frequencies gathers pace, larger numbers of RRUs with beam-steering capability will be needed. In addition, minimizing the need for DC bias supplies within RRUs will be critical to making them simpler, more robust, and more compact, thus remote delivery via power-over-fiber (PoF) is also expected to play a key role. Hence there is growing interest in combined RoF-PoF systems, including ones with beam-steering reconfigurability. In particular, the use of multicore fiber (MCF) is advantageous, since it enables simultaneous deployment of PoF, data transmission and transport of photonically-generated mm-waves through its various cores.
Moreover, in designing RoF systems for 5G and beyond, the radiating antenna plays a vital role. The antenna element must have the ability to rapidly steer the beam while maintaining good a bandwidth and gain. To address this, metamaterials and metasurface have emerged as a promising solution with the ability to provide compact designs, techniques for gain and bandwidth enhancement and for reconfigurable beam steering.
In this talk, we will focus on the application of photonics technology as a key enabler for Future G by discussing the following topics: optical control of metasurface antennas for beamsteering, the use of combined radio-over-fiber and power-over-fiber methods, and the photonic synthesis of low phase noise mm-wave and sub-THz signals.
