Spectral Efficiency and Receiver Sensitivity in Direct Detection Optical-OFDM
Spectral Efficiency and Receiver Sensitivity in Direct Detection Optical-OFDM
Spectral Efficiency and Receiver Sensitivity in Direct Detection Optical-OFDM
Detection Optical-OFDM
Abdulamir Ali, Jochen Leibrich and Werner Rosenkranz
Chair for Communications, University of Kiel, Kaiserstrae 2, D-24143 Kiel, Germany,
E-mail: aal@tf.uni-kiel.de
Abstract: We show by analysis and simulation that by proper biasing of the optical modulator,
the intermodulation distortion is minimized. Thus the spectral efficiency can be improved and
receiver sensitivity can be exchanged against spectral width.
2006 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (060.2330) Fiber optics communications; (060.4080) Modulation
1. Introduction
Optical transmission systems employing orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) have gained
considerable research interest because OFDM can combat fiber chromatic dispersion [1,2] and has the capability to
use higher level modulation formats to increase spectral efficiency [3]. In direct detection optical-OFDM (DD-
OFDM), however a spectrally-inefficient frequency gap (W
g
) between the optical carrier and the data spectrum,
with a bandwidth equal to the signal bandwidth (BB
ofdm
), is typically needed to avoid the second-order
intermodulation distortion (IMD) near the optical carrier due to the square low photodetector (PD) [4].
In this contribution, we show the dependency of the OFDM signal distortion and the receiver sensitivity on the
Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) bias point. In addition we propose a possibility of receiving the data signal with a
reduced frequency guard-band. By simulation, we show that transmission of 40Gb/s over 640km of an
uncompensated standard single-mode fiber is possible.
2. DD-OOFDM System setup
The general DD-OFDM system setup is shown in fig. 1. The real valued OFDM signal is generated by using a
complex conjugate extension for the input to IFFT [5]. The resulting signal has to be biased for driving an external
optical MZM in order to achieve sufficient carrier power for direct detection. A Single-Side-Band (SSB) optical
filter is used to transmit only one sideband together with the optical carrier. The optical transmission line consists of
8 spans of 80 km of standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) without dispersion compensation. Span loss is compensated
for by means of inline optical amplifiers. For the receiver, a variable optical attenuator (VOA) in front of the optical
preamplifier, (erbium doped fiber amplifier, EDFA), allows for OSNR tuning. OFDM demodulation is performed
including removing of cyclic prefix, serial-to-parallel conversion, FFT, post detection OFDM equalization, symbol
de-mapping and parallel-to-serial conversion.
MZM
OFDM
mod.
SSB
filter
channel OFDM
demod.
Data
in
Data
out
Bias
8x80 km
spans
VOA
EDFA 60 GHz 50 GHz
carrier
OFDM
spetcrum
amplified
uncompensated
Fig.1. Direct detection-OFDM system setup
For our investigation we change the drive conditions of the MZM (bias and signal variance) and we reduce the
frequency gap W
g
(see fig.3) between carrier and OFDM spectrum (by using appropriate zero padding in the OFDM
modulator) in order to reduce the total bandwidth occupancy and thus increase spectral efficiency. The system
parameters used in the simulation are: input data stream of PRBS 2
16
-1, data rate of 42.8 Gb/s including 7%
overhead for FEC, QPSK format, cyclic prefix of 1/8 of the useful OFDM symbol duration, number of subcarriers
of N=1024, and fiber input power of 0dBm. The received raw data rate after FEC decoding and removing of cyclic
prefix is 40 Gb/s.
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=0.5), where V
). Moreover, it is found by simulation, that the optimum value for the bias, for which
optimum sensitivity is achieved, is when the carrier to sideband power ratio (PR) is unity as depicted in fig. 2(b).
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4
10
15
20
25
30
Standard deviation/V
O
S
N
R
[
d
B
]
@
B
E
R
=
1
0
-
3
(a)
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
-15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15
10
15
20
25
30
Power ratio [dB]
O
S
N
R
[
d
B
]
@
B
E
R
=
1
0
-
3
(b)
0.1
0.2
0.25
/V
V
bias
/V
Fig.2. Required OSNR for BER=10
-3
versus standard deviation of OFDM driving signal for different bias points (a) and versus carrier-to-
sideband power ratio for different values of standard deviation of driving signal (b)
4. Optimizing Spectral efficiency
In this section, small-signal analysis of the cascade of MZM and PD, neglecting transmission fiber, is performed in
order to estimate the amount of nonlinear distortions. The bandpass output E-field of the MZM is
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) cos 2 cos , (1)
2
out c bias
E t f t x t V
V
where f
c
denotes the optical carrier frequency. E
out
(t)
first needs to be filtered by the SSB filter before the squaring
operation of the PD is applied. According to [7], second-order analysis results in the following expression for the
output current:
( )
( ) ( ) ( )
2 2 2 2
2 2
=0.5, i
SSB
(t) simplifies as:
( )
( ) ( ) ( )
2 2 2
2
1 .
2 16
SSB
A
x t x t x t
i t K
V V
+ +
(3)
It is found that term A in (3) does not exhibit spectral components around zero frequency. This is confirmed in
fig. 3, where the PSD of i
SSB
(t) is shown comparing two different settings for the bias. Obviously, setting
V
bias
/V
=0.5 results in low IMD. Thus we conclude that the frequency gap (W
g
) can be reduced significantly
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resulting in a more spectrally efficient transmission. Thus we investigate by simulation the impact of decreasing the
frequency gap (W
g
) on the receiver sensitivity in order to increase the spectral efficiency.
-50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50
-100
-80
-60
-40
-20
0
P
S
D
[
d
B
]
f [GHz]
(a)
-50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50
-100
-80
-60
-40
-20
0
P
S
D
[
d
B
]
f [GHz]
(b)
W
g
B
ofdm
W
g
B
ofdm
Fig.3. Received PSD after PD for B2B of DD-OFDM for SSB with V
bias
/V
=0.5 (b)
Fig. 4(a) shows the results for B2B-transmission. It can be shown that for V
bias
/V
V
bias
/V
Fig.4. Required OSNR for BER=10
-3
versus frequency gap for back-to-back (a) and 8x80km uncompensated spans link (b).
5. Conclusion
The dependency of the receiver sensitivity on the MZM operating point is shown. Proper selection of modulator
bias improves sensitivity by several dB. Morever, it is shown analytically and by simulation that biasing the MZM
at the quadrature point results in a significant reduction of intermodulation distortion which allows for reduction of
the frequency gap by at least 50% for a realistic system. This has a big advantage for systems which consider the
bandwidth efficiency as a first priority.
6. References
[1] A. J. Lowery and J. Armstrong, Orthogonal-frequency-division multiplexing for dispersion compensation of long-haul optical system,
OPTICS EXPRESS, Vol. 14, March 2006.
[2] Y. Tang, X. Yi, W. Shieh and R. Evans, Optimum Design for Coherent Optical OFDM Transmitter, Optical Fiber Comm. Conf. (OFC
2006), Paper JThA47.
[3] Z. Jia, J. Yu, D. Qian, G. Ellinas, G. K. Chang, Experimental demonstration for Delivering 1-Gb/s OFDM signals over 80-km SSMF in
40-GHz Radio-over-Fiber Access Systems, Optical Fiber Comm. Conf. (OFC2008), paper JWA108
[4] W-R. Peng, X. Wu, V. R. Arbab, B. Shamee, J-Y. Yang, L. C. Christen, K-M. Feng, A. E. Willner and S. Chi, Experimental
Demonstrationof 340 km SSMF Transmission Using a Virtual Single Sideband OFDM Signal that Employes Carrier Suppressed and
Iterative Detection Technique, Optical Fiber Comm. Conf. (OFC 2008), Paper OMU1.
[5] A. Ali, J. Leibrich and W. Rosenkranz, Impact of Nonlinearities on Optical OFDM with Direct Detection ECOC 2007, Paper P095
[6] J. Leibrich, A. Ali and W. Rosenkranz, OFDM Transceiver Design for Optimizing Sensitivity and Long-Haul Performance, LEOS
Summer Topic on Next Generation Transceiver Tech. for Long Haul Optical Comm., 2008.
[7] A. Ali, J. Leibrich and W. Rosenkranz, Spectrally efficient OFDM-transmission over Single-Mode Fiber Using Direct Detection 13
th
international OFDM-Workshop (InOWo08), Hamburg, Germany, 2008, pp 221-225
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