FPGA demonstration of adaptive spacetime compression towards high-fidelity, low-latency 5G fronthaul

We experimentally demonstrate 8-antenna MIMO fronthaul uplink enabled by the first FPGA-based adaptive space-time compressor. 48Gb/s CPRI-equivalent rate encapsulating 1024QAM 5G NR-grade signals is transported using as low as 2.5GBd optical PAM4, achieving <1.25% EVM and 50ns latency for compression.