10-W power light co-transmission with optically carried 5G NR signal over standard single-mode fiber

Efficient co-transmission of 10-W power light and optically carried 5G new radio (NR) signal over standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) is experimentally demonstrated, with an optical power transmission efficiency (OPTE) of power light up to 71.8%. This efficiency record is enabled by carefully manipulating the linewidth of the power light and appropriately adjusting the wavelength spacing between the power light and 5G NR optical signal to effectively mitigate the nonlinear effect arising in the SSMF. In the experiment, the optically carried 5G NR 64-level quadrature amplitude modulation orthogonal frequency division multiplexing signal at 1550 nm, with a data rate of 1.5 Gbit/s, is successfully co-propagated with 10-W power light at 1064 nm over 1-km SSMF. The error-vector magnitude (EVM) is 0.48% under a received electrical power of 25 dBm. In comparison with back-to-back transmission, only slight EVM degradation of 0.02% is observed, showing that the 5G NR optical signal is almost unaffected by the existence of power light. Moreover, the power fluctuation of the collected power light is less than 0.2% over 6 h, while the EVMfluctuation is smaller than 0.01% within 30 min. Our scheme is promising to realize an optically powered remote antenna unit through the existing 5G fronthaul SSMF link. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

Automated summary

Efficient co-transmission of 10W power light and optically carried 5G NR signal over standard single-mode fiber was demonstrated experimentally, achieving a high optical power transmission efficiency enabled by careful manipulation of light linewidth and wavelength spacing. The experiment showed successful co-propagation of a 1.5 Gbps 5G NR signal with 10W power light, with minimal impact on signal quality and power fluctuations over time.