Performance of Bidirectional LiFi over Plastic Optical Fiber (POF)

In this paper, we report on a bidirectional LiFi link integrated with a plastic optical fiber (POF) acting as fronthaul to make the system fully robust against electromagnetic interference in aircraft, industrial wireless, and offices. We have implemented the POF link using two specifically developed printed circuit boards interfacing directly with the DSP and the LiFi frontends. The fronthaul transports analog LiFi baseband signals transparently over the POF in a bandwidth of 200 MHz. The compound POF and LiFi link has been tested in several configurations and achieved unprecedented throughputs of 725 Mbit/s and 901 Mbit/s in forward and reverse link direction, respectively.