Access networks for personal communication systems

This work addresses the important issue of how to avoid installing big and expensive base stations in the small microcells of future personal communication networks. To this end, the capabilities of fiber and coax technologies are quantified and the feasibility of a hybrid fiber/coax access network is studied. A PCN access network is proposed which uses subcarrier multiplexing (SCM) in conjunction with a simple WDM configuration. We provide a comprehensive capacity analysis for the subcarrier multiplexed optical link (SCMOL) which is the communication link between each passive radio base station (PRBS) and the central base station (CBS). Dynamic range requirements of the cellular radio environment are explicitly quantified and explained in terms of the dynamic range of SCMOL considering all the major noise sources.