Converged Wireless and Wireline Access System Based on Optical Phase Modulation for Both Radio-Over-Fiber and Baseband Signals

We propose and experimentally investigate a scheme for transmitting a phase-modulated radio-over-fiber (RoF) signal along an existing fiber infrastructure without degradation of the existing baseband signal. Optical phase encoding of both signals, namely a baseband 21.4-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero differential quaternary phase-shift keyed signal and a 5.25-GHz RoF carrying 1.25 Gb/s, enables the use of identical optical receiver structures. The experimental results show that both receivers achieve error-free operation after 80-km standard single-mode fiber transmission. The proposed scheme has potential applications for converged wireless and wireline optical access networks.