Coverage Range and Cost Comparison of Remote Antenna Unit Designs for Inbuilding Radio over Fiber Technology

Razali Ngah (Wireless Communication Centre, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 81310 Skudai, Johor Bahru, Malaysia)
Teguh Prakoso (Wireless Communication Centre, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 81310 Skudai, Johor Bahru, Malaysia)
Tharek Abdul Rahman (Wireless Communication Centre, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 81310 Skudai, Johor Bahru, Malaysia)

Journal of ICT Research and Applications
Vol. 2 No. 1 (2008)

Future communication needs to be ubiquitous, broadband, convergent, and seamless. Radio over fiber (RoF) technology is one of the most important enabler in access network for the technologies. Adoption of RoF faces bottleneck in optoelectronics, that they are still expensive, high power consumption, and limited in bandwidth. To solve the problem, transceiver in remote antenna unit (RAU) is developed, i.e. electroabsorption transceiver (EAT) and asymmetric FabryPerot modulator (AFPM). This paper compares their coverage range and cost in providing WCDMA and WLAN services. Needed gain of RF amplifier for supporting picocell is also discussed.