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IJEETC 2022 Vol.11(3): 175-183
doi: 10.18178/ijeetc.11.3.175-183

Performance Evaluation of a SCM-OFDM Radio over Fiber System for the Mobile Fronthaul

Oratilwe Jothi 1, Edwin Ataro2, and Stephen Musyoki 2
1. Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Pan African Univ. Inst. of Basic Sciences Technology and Innovation, Nairobi, Kenya
2. School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Technical Univ. of Kenya, 52428-00200, Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract—The exponential growth in mobile data traffic caused by the upsurge of Internet users has led to a high demand of capacity on the mobile data networks. High capacity and high data rate requirements created an emergence of Radio over Fiber (RoF) technology which is a possible key in the provision of high bandwidth and cost-effective fronthaul solutions. This paper presents an evaluation on the integration of Subcarrier Multiplexing (SCM) with RoF and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technologies to enhance the system capacities. A 4-channel SCM-OFDM architecture combined with RoF technology is examined across three different modulation schemes (i.e., 256-QAM, 64-QAM and 16-QAM) for transmission distances from 10 km to 120 km for two data rates i.e., (5 and 10) Gbps. The performance of the architectures is measured by Bit-error rate (BER), Quality-factor (Q-factor), Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), Error Vector Magnitude (EVM), Eye-Opening Penalty (EOP), received power and of transmitted signals. The simulation results indicates that the SCM-OFDM model at a 10 Gbps data rate gives a better performance under the 256-QAM modulation scheme. Furthermore the performance of all the SCM-OFDM systems is more superior operating at a 10 Gbps data rate when compared to the 5 Gbps data rate.
 
Index Terms—Radio over Fiber (RoF), Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), Subcarrier Multiplexing (SCM), Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM), Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR)

Cite: Oratilwe Jothi, Edwin Ataro, and Stephen Musyoki, "Performance Evaluation of a SCM-OFDM Radio over Fiber System for the Mobile Fronthaul," International Journal of Electrical and Electronic Engineering & Telecommunications, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 175-183, May 2022. Doi: 10.18178/ijeetc.11.3.175-183

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