Radio-over-fiber (RoF) systems use an optical network to transparently distribute
radio signals from the access point to distributed remote antennas, combining flexibility
and mobility offered by wireless networks with capacity and transparency of fiber-fed
networks. In order to offer higher throughput, the recent IEEE 802.11n standard introduces
new mechanisms at the physical and MAC layers. In this paper, we investigate the performance
when the IEEE 802.11n protocol is used in a RoF architecture. We show that the aggregation
mechanism provided by IEEE 802.11n limits the effect of the extra propagation delay
which is introduced by optical fibers in RoF systems. In addition, we report that
the adaptation of the slot time parameter value is needed to keep the efficiency of
the IEEE 802.11n frame aggregation mechanism in RoF networks.
