Space-division multiplexing (SDM) has attracted significant attention in recent years because larger transmission capacity is enabled by more degrees of freedom (DOFs) in few-mode fibers (FMFs) compared with single-mode fibers (SMFs). To transmit independent information on spatial modes without or with minor digital signal processing (DSP), weakly-coupled FMFs are preferred in various applications. Several cases with different use of spatial DOFs in weakly-coupled FMFs are demonstrated in this work, including single-mode or mode-group-multiplexed transmission, and spatial DOFs combined with time or frequency DOF to improve the system performance.

A pre-coding-assisted power detection scheme for radio over fiber downlink is presented. This scheme can eliminate laser phase noise while avoiding high energy-consuming electrical carrier required in conventional power and/or envelope detection schemes. Theoretical analysis and experimental verification are performed. 0.625 Gbaud pre-coded quadrature phase-shift keying or 16 quadrature amplitude modulation signals can both be recovered by power detection without electrical carrier assistance at the receiver after 75 km fiber transmission. Not only robust against the laser phase noise, an improvement of about 5 dB in receiver sensitivity can also be achieved, as compared with the conventional power detection scheme.

A complex-coefficient microwave photonic filter with continuous tunability is proposed and demonstrated, which has a compact structure and stable performance without splitting the optical path and tuning the polarization state. By only controlling the DC biases of the modulator, the amplitudes and the phases of the filter taps can both be tuned. The phase difference between the two filter taps covers a full 360° range from 10 GHz to 32 GHz. Frequency responses of the proposed filter are measured within 10–20 GHz with different center frequencies.

We have projected and verified a bidirectional intra-/inter-radio-access-technology carrier-aggregation method for a next-generation heterogeneous mobile network supported by filter bank multicarrier (FBMC). Successful transmission of intra/inter-band carrier aggregation between five broadband FBMC signals and three bands 4G long-term-evolution-advanced signal over 50 km single-mode fiber plus 10 m free-space is successfully broadcasted by employing an incoherent light-injection scheme in downlink. In uplink, two intra-bands carrier-aggregated wireless local area network Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 802.11g signal is carried over the equal distance. High receiver sensitivity, low error vector magnitude, and clear constellation diagrams show successful delivery of different wireless services for different consumers. Therefore, the proposed hybrid system should become a potential solution for a future mobile front-haul network because of its low latency and high capacity.

We propose a general guideline on the design of a stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS)-based microwave photonic filter (MPF) using a directly modulated pump. Filter gain profiles and passband ripples with waveform repetition periods of the driving current ranging from 2 to 100 ns are measured after the transmission of different fiber lengths. The results show that the filter performance has nothing to do with the fiber length, and the digital-to-analog converter bandwidth requirement for the driving current is no more than 500 MHz. Therefore, the low cost, flexible reconfiguration, and miniaturization characteristics make an SBS filter using a directly modulated pump a promising choice as an MPF.

This Letter investigates the impact of the photodiode (PD) saturation in a sub-sampled photonic analog-to-digital converter (PADC) with two individual pulse lasers. It is essentially proved that when the optical power to the saturated PD increases, the optical–electrical conversion (OEC) responsivity and digitized output power of the PADC decrease. If femtosecond pulses are employed for the PADC sampling clock, the time-stretching process in a dispersive medium is necessary to decrease the impact of the PD saturation. In contrast, when the sampling clock with picosecond pulses is utilized, the PD saturation is more tolerable, and thus, the OEC responsivity can be improved by an increase of the optical power to the PD no matter if the time-stretching process is employed.