Direct digital predistortion technique for the compensation of laser chirp and fiber dispersion in long haul radio over fiber links

Analog Radio-over-Fiber (A-RoF) communication technology constitutes a promising technique for next generation radio access networks thanks to its relatively low bandwidth requirements. Within this context, an efficient predistortion technique is proposed, which can be applied to reduce the impairments of A-RoF systems due to the combined effects of frequency chirp of the laser source and chromatic dispersion of the optical channel. The radio frequency signal is firstly put in digital form through an analog to digital converter, then the predistortion operation is realized, and finally the resulting signal is put again into analog form. A comprehensive analysis on the theoretical basis of the proposed approach is presented, together with the approximations introduced, which makes it practically realizable. The improvements on the quality of the received signal due to the proposed solution are illustrated with reference to scenarios of applicative interest. The performance of proposed technique is evaluated in terms of adjacent channel leakage ratio and error vector magnitude when long term evolution signal is applied at the input.