Radio-over-Fiber-supported Millimeter-wave Multiuser Transmission with Low-Complexity Antenna Units

A system for serving a large number of users at millimeter-wave (mmW) frequencies using a single Radio Frequency (RF) chain is presented. A single Remote Antenna Unit (RAU) supported by Radio-over-Fiber transport is used to transmit multiple 60GHz band signals to various users located at different spatial locations using the beamsteering characteristics of a Leaky Wave Antenna (LWA). Error Vector Magnitude analysis has been performed for each user signal up to a maximum of seven users per RF chain with wireless transmission over 2m. A performance comparison for different user-signal frequency spacings has been provided to understand the limitations of the system and results show that the proposed system design with the LWA performs better than systems using waveguide and horn antenna transmitters. A realization to double the number of served users is also presented which shows that up to 10 users can be served using half region of the LWA, with each user transmitting 1Gb/s data rate, delivering an aggregate data rate of 10Gb/s.