2019 Volume E102.C Issue 3 Pages 235-242
This paper studies the performance of the quantitative RF power variation in Radio-over-Fiber beam forming system utilizing a phased array-antenna integrating photo-diodes in downlink network for next generation millimeter wave band radio access. Firstly, we described details of fabrication of an integrated photonic array-antenna (IPA), where a 60GHz patch antenna 4×2 array and high-speed photo-diodes were integrated into a substrate. We evaluated RF transmission efficiency as an IPA system for Radio-over-Fiber (RoF)-based mobile front hall architecture with remote antenna beam forming capability. We clarified the characteristics of discrete and integrated devices such as an intensity modulator (IM), an optical fiber and the IPA and calculated RF power radiated from the IPA taking account of the measured data of the devices. Based on the experimental results on RF tone signal transmission by utilizing the IPA, attainable transmission distance of wireless communication by improvement and optimization of the used devices was discussed. We deduced that the antenna could output sufficient power when we consider that the cell size of the future mobile communication systems would be around 100 meters or smaller.