This paper investigates the impact of optical crosstalk in fiber-radio syst
ems incorporating wavelength division multiplexing. (WDM). We present a sim
ple analytical model that allows the impact of optical crosstalk in such ne
tworks to be assessed and validate the results via experiment for both in-b
and and out-of-band optical crosstalk. We show that crosstalk-induced power
penalties in fiber-radio WDM networks are reduced compared to baseband mod
ulation for the case of in-band crosstalk. In addition, in contrast to base
band modulated optical links, the crosstalk channel in fiber-radio systems
can be filtered electrically if the crosstalk signal carries a different wi
reless frequency. However, a power penalty is still observed for the case o
f in-band crosstalk, even for perfect electrical filtering of the crosstalk
channel.