Radio relaying for long term evolution employing radio-over-fibre

The 3GPP long term evolution (LTE) standard is continuing to evolve to add more capabilities and enable transmission and reception of even higher data rates [1]. In order to improve the network coverage performance, deployment of large units of LTE base station or eNodeB (eNB) are required. Increasing coverage capacity widely is a critical challenge due to the complexity and cost associated. The implementation of radio relaying techniques by employing relay nodes (RN) is an attractive solution. Radio-over-fibre (RoF) techniques have been considered as an alternative for wireless interface structure between eNB and RN in order to avoid severe multipath fading. This paper compares and analyzes the performance of RoF and wireless eNB-RN interfaces. The results indicate that wireless interface consumes at least 31 dB more signal power to achieve the same performance as the RoF technology.