Optical Networking Technologies and Data Security - OPNTDS 2012

Design and Simulation of a Radio Over Fiber System

and its Performance Analysis
Jincy Johny #, Sreenesh Shashidharan
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering , Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science.
Hindustan University, Chennai, India.

# Corresponding author :Jincy Johny

[email protected]

Abstract — A Radio Over Fiber has the special characteristic

feature of having both a fiber optic link and a free space radio
path. Fiber based wireless (Fi-Wi) access facilitates high-capacity
multimedia services in a real-time basis. The simulation model
developed using Optisystem 10 have integrated systems for both
RF wireless and optical fiber whereby, the ROF network model
consists of a central station, a remote access unit and an optical
fiber link model that uses the commercially available parameters.
We also investigates the variations in Q factor, BER and eye
opening with respect to the wavelength, bit rate and fiber length
using the simulation software.

Keywords: ROF; NRZ Coding; RZ Coding; Q Factor; BER; Eye

Height; Wavelength: Bit Rate; Fiber Length Fig 1: Typical Radio Over Fiber System

I. INTRODUCTION
Radio over Fiber (ROF) is a newer technology where, light is II. ROF DESIGN USING OPTISYSTEM
modulated with radio frequency signals and transmitted over In present optical transmission systems, communications
the optical fiber to facilitate wireless access and transmission. traffic is conveyed by optical carriers whose intensity is
The convergence of wired and wireless networks is a modulated by the communications traffic that is the optical
promising solution for rapidly growing bandwidth demands in carrier is Amplitude Modulated (AM). Generally the
the communication systems,. Radio-over-fiber is a promising communications traffic used to modulate the optical carrier
solution for the increasing demand for transmission capacity will have a Non Return to Zero (NRZ) format though
and flexibility, as well as offering economic advantage due to sometimes it can have a Return to Zero (RZ) format.
its broad bandwidth and low attenuation characteristics [1]. There are two technologies for modulation, i.e. direct and
Radio Over Fiber is actually an analog optical link which external modulators. In direct or without external modulation
transmits modulated RF signals. It transmits RF signal format the RF signal varies directly with the bias of a
downlink and uplink, to and from central station (CS) and to semiconductor laser diode and the external modulators are
base station (BS). The main requirements of a ROF link either integrated with Mach-Zehnder interferometers or electro
architecture are duplex operation (downlink-uplink), absorption modulator. Intensity-modulation (IM) is preferred
reasonable length and high performance optical components. mainly due to the simplicity of the corresponding optical
ROF systems have enhanced cellular coverage , lower receiver/detector that is based on a photodetector, for example
attenuation losses, higher capacity, larger bandwidth and a photodiode, which operates as a simple amplitude threshold
immunity to radio frequency interference. The basic detector. For particular applications, in general for the soon
configuration of a ROF link is shown in Figure, where the coming 40Gbit/s optical communication systems, it has been
system consist of a central station and remote access unit proposed to use other modulation formats which have greater
(RAU) connected by a single mode fiber. Figure 1 shows a immunity against non-linear propagation effects and also for
typical Radio Over Fiber System [2]. greater polarization mode dispersion (PMD) and chromatic
dispersion (CD) tolerance. These characteristics can open the
road to a new design of optical transmission systems for
example with higher transmission powers and longer sections
free of repeaters. Figure 2 shows the simulation model of an
ROF system designed using Optisystem.

978-1-4673-2017-7/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE

978-1-4673-2015-3/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE 655

Here 2 RF signals each of 10GHz and 15GHz frequency are B. EYE DIAGRAM ANALYSER
power combined and then modulated with optical signals from The Eye Diagram Analyser block of the Optisystem software
the CW laser in the LiNb-Mach Zehnder Modulator. The displays multiple traces of a modulated signal to produce an
modulated signal is then transmitted through the conventional eye diagram. In telecommunication, an eye pattern, also
optical fiber with a Reference wavelength of 1550 nm and known as an eye diagram, is an oscilloscope display in which
fiber length of 20 Km. After transmission through the fiber the a digital data signal from a receiver is repetitively sampled and
signals are filtered using a Bessel filter and demodulated in the applied to the vertical input, while the data rate is used to
AM demodulator. trigger the horizontal sweep. It is so called because, for several
types of coding, the pattern looks like a series of eyes between
a pair of rails [4].
An open eye pattern corresponds to a minimal signal
distortion. Distortion of the signal waveform due to
intersymbol interference (ISI) and noise appears as a closure
of the eye diagram [5]. Figure 4 shows the eye diagram of the
10GHz RF signal

Fig 2 : Simulation Model of an ROF system

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A. BIT ERROR ANALYSER
In digital transmission the number of bit errors is the number Fig 4 : Eye Diagram analyzer for 10 GHz RF signal
of received bits of a data stream over a communication that
have been altered due to noise, interference distortion bit or
synchronization errors. The bit error rate or bit error ratio C. GRAPHICAL RESULTS FOR NRZ CODING
(BER) is the number of bit errors divided by the total number Non-Return-to-Zero (NRZ) and Return-to-Zero (RZ) are the 2
of transferred bits during a studied time interval [3]. most common modulation formats used in communication.
Here in this paper we perform analysis using NRZ coding
(i) Varying Bit Rate
From the graph shown in Figure 5 it can be observed that the
maximum Q factor, is following a 6th for the 10 GHz signals.

Fig 3: Bit error analyzer for 10 GHz RF signal Fig 5: Maximum Q Factor Vs Bit Rate for 10GHz RF signal

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From the graph shown in Figure 6 it can be observed that the (ii) Varying Fiber Length
minimum Bit Error Rate (BER) remains almost constant for From the graph shown in Figure 9, it can be observed that the
different bit rates in case of the 10 GHz signal. maximum Q factor decreases almost linearly with respect to
the fiber length for the 10 GHz RF signal.

Fig 6: Minimum Bit Error Rate Vs Bit Rate for 10GHz signal

The plot between eye height and bit rate follows a 6th degree Fig 9: Maximum Q Factor Vs Fiber Length for 10GHz RF signal
polynomial for the 10 GHz signals as shown in Figure7.
From the graphs shown in Figure 10 and 11, it can be
observed that the minimum BER remains almost constant for
different lengths of fiber and the eye height decreases
exponentially with the fiber length for the 10 GHz RF signals.

Fig 7: Eye Height Vs Bit Rate for 10GHz RF signal

From the graph shown in Figure 8 it can be observed that the

threshold value, is following a 6th degree polynomial for 10
GHz signal.
Fig 10: Minimum BER Vs Fiber Length for 10GHz RF signal

Fig 8: Threshold Vs Bit Rate for 10GHz RF signal

Fig 11 : Eye Height Vs Fiber Length for 10GHz RF signal

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 Fig 12: Threshold Vs Fiber Length for 10GHz RF signal
Fig 15 : Eye Height Vs Wavelength for 10GHz signal
From the graph shown in Figure 12 it can be observed that the
threshold also decreases exponentially with respect to fiber
length for the 10 GHz RF signal.

(iii) Varying Wavelength

Fig 16 : Threshold Vs Wavelength for 10GHz RF signal

IV. CONCLUSION
Fig 13 : Maximum Q factor Vs Wavelength for 10 GHz signal
A radio over fiber system were designed and simulated
From the graphs shown in Figure 13 and 14 it can be observed using the Optisystem software and its various parameters such
that the maximum Q factor follows a 4th degree polynomial as Q factor, BER, Eye height, etc were compared for different
and the minimum BER remains almost constant with respect categories of coding such as NRZ and RZ coding. Due to
to wavelength for 10 GHz RF signal. higher peak power, NRZ may suffer from more nonlinearities,
whereas RZ may suffer from more dispersion which is due to
shorter pulse width. Studies shows that in general, we can
operate better by using RZ modulation in high power regime
than NRZ coding.
REFERENCES
[1] Hamim Nasoha and Sevia M. Idrus, " Modeling and Performance
Analysis of WCDMA Radio over Fiber System", Asia Pacific
Conference on Applied Electromagnetics Proceedings, Photonics
Technology Center, Malaysia, 2007.
[2] H. Al Raweshidi, S. Komaki, "Radio Over Fiber Technologies for
Mobile Communication Network", Artech House, London, eds. 2002
[3] Shweta Sharma and Vanita Kamra, "Performance Evaluation of Digital
Modulation Techniques for WCDMA using Radio over Fiber", IJECT
Vol. 2, Issue 3, Sept. 2011
Fig 14 : Minimum BER Vs Wavelength for 10GHz RF signal
[4] Kisiel. K, Sahota D., Swaminathan. G, “Quadrature Amplitude
Modulation:a simulation study”, School of Engineering Science Simon
From the graphs shown in Figure 15 and 16, it can be Fraster University, Canada (2005)
observed that the Eye Height and threshold both follows a 4th [5] Xiaolong Li, “Simulink-based Simulation of Quadrature Amplitude
degree polynomial with respect to wavelength for the 10 GHz Modulation (QAM) System”, Proceedings of IAJC-IJME
RF signal.

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