Multicore fiber scenarios supporting power over fiber in radio over fiber systems

Abstract

We propose the integration of power over fiber in the next generation 5G radio access network front-haul solutions based on spatial division multiplexing with multicore fibers. The different architectures in both shared- and dedicated- core scenarios for power over fiber delivery and data signals are described. The maximum power to be delivered depending on the efficiencies of the different components is addressed as well as the limits of the delivered energy to avoid fiber fuse and non-linear effects. It is shown how those limits depend on high power laser linewidth, fiber attenuation, link length and fiber core effective area. The impairments related to non-linear effects, multicore fiber crosstalk and temperature are also theoretically analyzed. Experiments show there is no degradation of signal quality for feeding powers of several hundreds of milliwatts for both scenarios in 4-core multicore fibers. This study helps in designing future power by light delivery solutions in Radio over Fiber systems with multicore fibers.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Directorate for Research and Innovation at Madrid region, and H2020 European Union programme under Grant RTI2018-094669-B-C32 and Grant Y2018/EMT-4892, and in part by FSE and 5G PPP Bluespace project Grant 762055

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