Photonics-Aided Millimeter-Wave Technologies for Extreme Mobile Broadband Communications in 5G

To meet the enhanced-mobile-broadband (eMBB) challenges in 5G, we have systematically explored the potential of the photonics-aided millimeter-wave (mm-wave) communication in terms of the wireless transmission capacity and distance it can accommodate. Enabled by various kinds of advanced multiplexing and digital-signal-processing (DSP) techniques, we have successfully achieved the significant enhancement of the wireless mm-wave signal transmission capacity from 100 Gb/s to 400 Gb/s, even to 1 Tb/s. Since our large-capacity (>100-Gb/s) experimental demonstrations typically have a very short wireless transmission distance of several meters, we have further explored the techniques for the extension of the wireless mm-wave signal transmission distance, and successfully achieved a series of field-trial demonstrations on photonics-aided long-distance (>100-m) wireless mm-wave signal transmission. We have realized the record-breaking product of wireless transmission capacity and distance, i.e., 54 Gb/s × 2.5 km.