Radio-over-fiber as the energy efficient backhaul option for mobile base stations

The power consumption of mobile base stations remains the biggest contributor in the telecommunication networks. RoF has been recognized as a solution to realize energy-efficient base station architecture. In this paper, we investigate the base station power consumption per square meter for five different RoF transmission schemes. Results show that: (1) baseband-over-fiber transmission scheme is the most energy inefficient scheme in both rural and urban areas; (2) for rural areas using macro base stations (transmitting power above 40 dBm), digitized RF/IF-over-fiber technique have advantage in terms of energy consumption; (3) for urban areas using micro base stations (transmitting power less than 25 dBm), analog RF/IF-over-fiber are the most energy-efficient schemes.