Abstract

Over the last decade, the growing demand of connectivity has produced a rapid evolution of 5G technology to answer the requirements of relevant areas such as Internet of Things (IoT). Radio and optical technology convergence appears as a solution to fulfill the needs of the future networks, exploiting the high bandwidth-range of optical fibers with the ubiquity and mobility of radio communications. The concept of Radio-over-Fiber has usually been applied successfully using silica fibers to transmit light from a modulated laser to a photodetector for demanding applications. In this work, we propose to evaluate the performance of Polymer Optical Fiber (POF) links to carry RF signals for those applications where their limited bandwidth-length product is sufficient, while their fast and cost-effective deployment is paramount. In particular, we analyze the performance of the downlink transmission of Long Term Evolution (LTE) and guardband Narrow-Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) signals through a 75-m Poly(methyl methacrylate) – PMMA Graded-Index POF. Our study considers a comprehensive set of LTE carrier frequencies and bandwidths.