The introduction of technologies such as Carrier Aggregation (CA), Massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) and Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP), aiming to improve the performance of LTE and LTE-A systems, increases the challenge for deploying Mobile Fronthaul due to the network capacity limitation to support higher transmission rates. An approach to deal with Frontahul’s capacity limitation is data compression. Several techniques have been developed for signal compression in fronthaul, and most of these
techniques compress the signal transmitted in baseband. In this work, a compression technique is developed for specific scenarios of Digital Radio-over-Fiber systems, transmitting the signal in intermediate frequency (IF). This technique uses the radio channel state information (CSI) to control signal compression in the fronthaul. The simulation results with the developed technique demonstrate its ability to reduce the data transmitted onthe network by 45.05%. In addition, this technique allows the transmission of 64 QAM modulated signals using a lower quantizer resolution, e.g., 4 bits per sample, maintaining the EVM below 3GPP recommended threshold (8%). Finally, the performance of the fronthaul network is evaluated experimentally in an optical link of 20-km, considering scenarios with and without signal compression.
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