Beyond 5G Without Obstacles: mmWave-over-Fiber Distributed Antenna Systems

Beyond-5G wireless systems require significant improvement to enable the Internet of Everything, offering ultra-reliability, ultra-low-latency and high data-rates for holographic telepresence, immersive augmented and virtual reality, and cyber-physical systems in Industry 4.0. The mmWave frequency band (30–300 GHz) provides the required bandwidths, but very challenging propagation conditions exist. Conventional co-located multi-antenna systems counter higher path loss, but are insufficient in challenging real-life scenarios with frequent non-line-of-sight conditions. For distributed massive MIMO systems or large intelligent surfaces, we advocate optically-enabled distributed antenna systems (DAS) to alleviate these issues. To ensure tight synchronization and scalability, we propose a mmWave-over-fiber based architecture with low-complexity high-performance remote antenna units (RAUs). Strategically distributing and integrating RAUs in the user equipments' environment yield high throughput and reliable coverage. We demonstrate a mmWave-over-fiber DAS yielding multi-Gb/s mmWave communication in a harsh indoor environment with non-line-of-sight conditions, measuring wireless data rates up to 24 Gb/s, by selecting the RAU yielding the best link quality, and up to 48 Gb/s, by leveraging distributed MIMO techniques.