Analogue Radio over Fiber aided Multi-service Communications for High Speed Trains

TL;DR

This paper proposes an analogue radio over fiber system for high-speed trains that supports multi-service communications, enhances quality of service, and reduces costs by using photonics aided beamforming for sub-6GHz and mmWave frequencies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel A-RoF architecture with photonics aided beamforming capable of supporting multi-frequency services in high-speed train environments.

Findings

Supports sub-6GHz and mmWave communications simultaneously

Achieves a 180-degree beamforming range with high resolution

Reduces cost by eliminating bulky electronic components

Abstract

High speed trains (HST) have gradually become an essential means of transportation, where given our digital world, it is expected that passengers will be connected all the time. More specifically, the on-board passengers require fast mobile connections, which cannot be provided by the currently implemented cellular networks. Hence, in this article, we propose an analogue radio over fiber (A-RoF) aided multi-service network architecture for high-speed trains, in order to enhance the quality of service as well as reduce the cost of the radio access network (RAN). The proposed design can simultaneously support sub- 6GHz as well as milimeter wave (mmWave) communications using the same architecture. Explicitly, we design a photonics aided beamforming technique in order to eliminate the bulky high-speed electronic phase-shifters and the hostile broadband mmWave mixers while providing a low-cost RAN solution. Finally, a beamforming range of 180 is demonstrated with a high resolution using our proposed system.