Mikhail E. Belkin, Leonid Zhukov and Alexander S. Sigov, Russian Technological University MIREA, Russia

A new cost-efficient concept to realize a real-time monitoring of quality-of-service metrics and other service data in 5G and beyond access network using a separate return channel based on a vertical cavity surface emitting laser in the optical injection locked mode that simultaneously operates as an optical transmitter and as a resonant cavity enhanced photodetector, is proposed and discussed. The feasibility and efficiency of the proposed approach are confirmed by a proof-of-concept experiment when optically transceiving high-speed digital signal with multiposition quadrature amplitude modulation of a radio-frequency carrier.

5G and beyond, access network, RoF-based mobile fronthaul/backhaul, real-time monitoring, QoS metrics, OIL-VCSEL.