Transmission performance of all-optical domain orthogonal frequency division multiplexing signals due to fiber nonlinearities for long-reach PON applications

Abstract

This study examined the performance of 110 Gb/s all-optical domain orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (AO-OFDM) signal transmission systems using optical multi-carrier generation and optical 2-subcarrier modulation under the effects of chromatic dispersion and fiber nonlinearity. The numerical simulation results showed that the performance degradation of AO-OFDM signals lies in the inter-carrier interference between the subcarrier signals generated from the fiber nonlinearities. The numerical simulation showed that the calculated BER of the AO-OFDM channels has some power penalties at 10 (9) BER for the fiber chromatic dispersion effect. The calculated receiver sensitivity at 10 (9) BER showed additional degradation at the central subcarrier channel by applying a fiber launching power of 12 dBm after transmission over a 100 km standard single-mode fiber (SMF) link. The simulation results are expected to be useful for multi-service systems employing AO-OFDM technology in the future long-reach passive optical network (PON) applications. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.