When Artech House authors write their books, we ask them what they want their readers to get out of the project. In this series, we show you what our authors, in their own words, wish to impart upon readers. Fabio Cavaliere, author of Photonic Applications for Radio Systems Networks, describes what his book is about:
An essential resource for optical network designers
The book discusses the application of photonic technology for radio system and networks, putting emphasis on the recent 5G standard. Three aspects are addressed. A first aspect concerns the new architecture of the optical transport network, driven by the new challenging requirements that 5G poses in terms of high capacity, high energy efficiency, low latency and low cost. A second aspect regards the use of photonic devices to perform tasks as radio-frequency generation and beamforming, with improved accuracy and cost compared to traditional electronic systems, especially when moving to mm-waves. A third aspect regards the replacement of electric interconnect systems with higher speed and more energy efficient optical lines to perform more effectively computationally demanding baseband processing in 5G.
For years, the evolution of optical networks and mobile networks followed independent paths, leading not only to the adoption of different transmission technologies for mobile and optical networks but also to a separation of education and career paths, which have in common only basic background in communications engineering. However, the advent of 5G posed new requirements to optical network designers, like the need to guarantee high transmission capacity at low latency, asking him or her to acquire competence in mobile system engineering. Vice versa, who plans a mobile network cannot ignore anymore the boundary constraints imposed by the fiber network, which risks being a serious bottleneck. In a few words, mobile and optical network shall be jointly designed. This book intends to answer to this need, providing optical engineers with basic information and practical design guidelines about the new generation mobile transport architecture and making aware experts in wireless communications about the many possibilities offered by photonics, such as optical beamforming and optical processing of radio carriers.
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