Quality-Based Channel Allocation Scheme with Predistortion in Multi-Channel Radio over Fiber System

Radio over Fiber (RoF) is a promising solution for providing wireless access services. Heterogeneous radio signals are transferred via an optical fiber link using an analog transmission technique. When the RoF and the radio frequency (RF) devices have a nonlinear characteristic, these will create the intermodulation products (IMPs) in the system and generate the intermodulation distortion (IMD). In this paper, the IMD interference in the uplink RF signals from the coupling effect between the downlink and the uplink antennas has been addressed. We propose a method using the dynamic channel allocation (DCA) algorithm with the predistortion (PD) technique to improve the throughput performance of the multi-channel RoF system. The carrier to distortion plus noise power ratio (CDNR) is evaluated for all channel allocation combinations; then the best channel combination is assigned as a set of active channels to minimize the effect of IMD. The results show that the DCA with PD has the lowest IMD and obtains a better throughput performance.