Increasing Received Modulation Signal for Integrated EOM Microwave Antenna by Using Paraboloid Reflector

Abstract

Fifth generation mobile communication, 5G is a cellular networking architecture built based on the International Mobile Telecommunication (IMT) 2020 vision. As the vision to give better bit rate at the wireless user side, it requires fiber-optics transport or fronthaul to optimize the energy and decrease the delay in the process of transferring signals from wireless modes to fiber-optics and vice versa. One of it is a radio over fiber technology, which supplement the IMT 2020 standard. The radio over fiber communication consists of radio and optical link. Formerly, there are several techniques that have been proposed to reduce the network delay or latency in radio over fiber link. One of such techniques is to integrate a microwave receiving antenna with electro-optical modulator (EOM) plates in one device. However, there is a consequence that the RF modulating signals become very low. While an expectation that this integration can eliminate the requirement of the low noise amplifier (LNA) component in the RoF. Previously, the integrated antenna EOM arranged in a serial cascade or parallel, but it can cause disruption in electro-optic modulation. To keep maintain an adequate signal level without disturbing the modulation process, in this paper, we propose another method, whereas using an existing paraboloid dish to focus on the integrated microwave antenna EOM modulator. We examine the experiment in the radio link and comparing the surface area among the paraboloid and bowtie substrate to get the increasing RF modulation signal on the bowtie receiver. The experiments show 20 dB increasing of RF modulation signal. This method can be a solution for overcome the decreasing RF signal on the integrated EOM microwave antenna.