Drs. Janusz Murakowski, Garrett Schneider, Dennis Prather and Xiao-Feng Qi received the Charles Kao Best Paper Award at the IEEE 2023 Wireless and Optical Communications Conference (WOCC), for their paper “C-RAN at Millimeter Wave and Above: Full-Beamspace Radio Access Architecture“. Dr. Qi accepted the award on behalf of his colleagues on May 5th, 2023

Abstract

We report progress toward a RF-photonic centralized radio access network (C-RAN) architecture for distributed multi-point transmission over millimeter wave (mmW) spectra. The architecture comprises three components: (1) access points (APs) employing RF-photonic phased arrays capable of multibeam and multiband operation; (2) an RF-photonic beamspace processor unit (BPU) that carries out centralized beamspace processing across multiple APs, and (3) a single-fiber fronthaul capable of full-dimensional beamspace transportation between the BPU and the APs. It is shown that the photonic portion of the AP and the BPU can be extended with minimal alteration to include arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) functionality. The AWG feature allows a direct conversion between RF beams and optical wavelengths at the AP and the BPU, providing a scalable means of transporting the entire beamspace over a fronthaul network employing single-fiber wavelength division multiplexing (WDM).

Authors

Xiao-Feng Qi
Phase Sensitive Innovations, Inc., Newark, Delaware, USA
University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA

Janusz A. Murakowski
Phase Sensitive Innovations, Inc., Newark, Delaware, USA

Garrett J. Schneider
Phase Sensitive Innovations, Inc., Newark, Delaware, USA
University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA

Dennis W. Prather
Phase Sensitive Innovations, Inc., Newark, Delaware, USA
University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA

Keywords

• Phased arrays,
• Wireless communication,
• Radio frequency,
• Transportation,
• Wavelength division multiplexing,
• Optical network units,
• Optical beams