Real‐time demonstration of photonics‐based THz wireless fronthaul integrated with fiber‐optic mobile fronthaul

Abstract

A photonics‐based terahertz (THz) wireless fronthaul is proposed, and its feasibility is investigated by real‐time demonstration. The proposed wireless fronthaul can be simply integrated into existing fiber‐optic fronthaul, to serve as a complementary or emergency network. An optical signal can be converted into a THz wireless signal by photonics‐based THz‐signal generation technology, utilizing a unitraveling carrier photo‐diode. Following wireless transmission, the THz wireless signal is reconverted to an optical signal by using a Schottky‐barrier diode and an optical transmitter. To investigate the feasibility of our proposed concept, real‐time transmission over a 100 m‐equivalent configuration is demonstrated with 24.33 Gb/s common public radio interface option 10 signals, at a carrier frequency of 275 GHz. The latency added by the proposed wireless fronthaul was measured to be few 100 ns, which is negligibly lower than the wireless transmission latency required by 6G key performance indicator.