Experimental Study of Radio Frequency Transmission over Standard and High-Bandwidth Multimode Optical Fibers

We experimentally study radio frequency (RF) transmission over several standard (core diameter 62.5 gm) and high-bandwidth (core diameter 50 μm) multimode fibers (MMFs) with a wide range of bandwidths (170 MHz·km to 2600 MHz·km). Performance of the radio-over-fiber (RoF) link is assessed in terms of the error vector magnitude (EVM). An IEEE 802.11b/gwirless access point and a MMF link using a directly-modulated 850 nm vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) are implemented for demonstrating a robust system performance (EVM <4.4 %rms maximum) over 300 m (maximum in-building distance) for any of the 21 fibers investigated.