Integrated Photonic Filters for Flexible Analog-based Mobile Fronthauling

A Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM)-enabled analog mobile fronthaul architecture is presented supporting enhanced flexibility by exploiting the fine filtering properties of a fully reconfigurable, silicon photonics-based filtering element. The use of Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC)-based elastic optical circuitries to support wavelength selectivity, reconfigurability and advanced signal processing at the optical edge is thoroughly discussed. Numerical studies are presented emphasizing on the flexibility, low-energy consumption and the compatibility of our proposed PIC-based implementations with the analog Radio over Fiber (RoF)-based mobile transport schemes. Proof-of-concept analog photonic processing of 1 Gbaud Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK)-modulated radio is successfully demonstrated through Intermediate Frequency over Fiber (IFoF) transmission experiments.