Chapter 2

OPTICAL OFDM

2.1 INTRODUCTION
The growing interest for optical OFDM is because of the drastic increase in the
demand of high speed communication in mobile connectivity. OFDM has been
an important multiplexing technique in communication systems since last few
years. The principle of OFDM is to transmit the data through a large number of
multiple orthogonal subcarriers [W.Shieh et al ]. Optical OFDM has emerged as
a new trend in the optical communication networks to reduce the effects of
dispersion in optical fiber. OFDM is intended to be used as the modulation
technique in the next generation broadband wireless networks because it supports
increased robustness with respect to narrowband interference and frequency
selective fading [A.P.Barros et al]. Also, the OFDM has the ability to deal with
the delay spread of the multi-path. The principle of operation of OFDM is that it
divides high data rate streams into different lower data rate streams. Then, the
entire low data rate stream is transmitted at the same time over a number of sub-
carriers. Because of this process the duration of symbol is increased . Therefore,
the amount of dispersion generated from delay spread of the multi-path will be
reduced significantly to lower levels.
In optical fiber communication systems, OFDM has received great attention as an
effective modulation technique format to overcome different restrictions in the
optical fiber transmission systems, such as different dispersions as modal
dispersion, Chromatic Dispersion (CD), Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD)
[Khaled Alatawi et al ]. OFDM offers mainly two fundamental advantages. One
is its robustness against the channel dispersion and second is ease of phase and
channel estimation in a time varying ambience. OFDM is advantageous from the
fact that it is using digital signal processing of Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT) to
obtain high sub-carrier density and computationally efficient phase and amplitude
equalization in optical domain [A.Lowery et al]. In addition Optical OFDM in

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Optical OFDM

long haul systems is used to compensate the linear distortions in optical fiber
such as group velocity dispersion.
2.2 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Multicarrier networks using Frequency Division Multiplexing have been around
since 1950’s [9] ,however due to their implementation complexity and inefficient
use of frequency band they were restricted to military applications. A multicarrier
system has basically a number of information bearing carriers transmitted in
parallel. Multicarrier systems in wireless applications are less susceptible to
channel induced distortions than single carrier systems at corresponding data
rates.
Chang [R. W. Chang(1996)] and Saltzberg [B. R. Saltzberg(1967)] further
developed FDM in the mid 60’s by introducing multiple carriers which overlaps
in the frequency domain without interfering with each other, utilizing the
frequency spectrum more efficiently, hence OFDM. However complexity issues
still remained.
In the 1970’s Weinsten and Ebert [S. Weinstein(1971)] used an Inverse Discrete
Fourier Transform(IDFT) and Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) to perform the
modulation and demodulation respectively, exploiting the sinusoidal nature of
Fourier Transform and significantly reducing the complexity of OFDM system.
In the last ten years more advances in practical OFDM have been made,
particularly in Europe where various projects were initiated such as Digital
Terrestrial Television Broadcasting (DTTB) that led to adoption of OFDM in
many European standards.
OFDM has progressed to the point where it has now been used for various
communication applications such as Digital Audio Broadcasting(DAB) and
Digital Video Broadcasting(DVB) in Europe .It has also been adopted as physical
layer modulation scheme for wireless networking standards such as the Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineer (IEEE) 802.11a.g standards in United
States.
2.3 OPTICAL OFDM
In an FDM transmission, the receiver need to be able to independently recover
each of the subcarrier and therefore these signals need to fulfill certain

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Optical OFDM

conditions. For instance, these signals can have a non overlapping spectra such
that a bank of filters tuned to each of the different subcarriers can recover each of
them independently. However, the practical filters require guard bands between
the subcarrier bands and therefore the resulting spectral efficiency is
low[Eduardo Heras Miguel(2010)] .
OFDM is a transmission technique that carries multicarrier and where a data
stream is carried with many lower rate subcarrier tones. OFDM is considered to
be advanced version of Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM).The FDM
technique has different information for different users is transmitted at the same
time over different frequency carriers as shown in figure 2.1[Dixon BJ (2001)].
As mentioned earlier, OFDM uses a number of subcarriers to send parallel low
data rate streams. The subcarriers of the OFDM can be modulated by using
various types of modulation techniques, such as QAM ,PSK,BPSK etc [Mamta,
Bharti (2012)].

Figure 2.1 (a) FDM Figure 2.2 (b) OFDM [S.Kumar]

After that, the subcarriers are carried over a high frequency carrier .The Fast
Fourier Transform (FFT) and the Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) are very
effective algorithms that can be use in the OFDM transceivers. These effective

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Optical OFDM

algorithms helps to prove that OFDM is having higher scalability above the data
rate and the channel dispersion .
2.4 OPTICAL OFDM SYSTEM

Figure 2.3 Basic Block of Optical OFDM System [Y.Tang]

A generic OFDM can be divided into five functional blocks as shown in figure
2.3 (i) RF OFDM Transmitter, (ii) RF to Optical Up Converter, (iii) Optical fiber
link, (iv) Optical to RF Down Converter, (v) RF OFDM Reciever [ Y.Tang ].

Figure 2.4 Detailed Block Diagram of Optical OFDM system [Y.Tang]

The OFDM scheme consists of two parts i.e. transmitter and receiver, as shown
below in Figure 2.4. The transmitter and the receiver part consists of number of

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Optical OFDM

blocks and are illustrated and discussed in detail in this section. In the
transmitter part, the data in serial sequence are converted to parallel and mapped
by an M-ary Modulator which could be Quadrature Amplitude modulation
(QAM). After that the signal is processed by Inverse Fast Fourier Transform
(IFFT) and guard interval is added to prevent overlapping between
subcarriers .Then the signal sent to the channel after performing a parallel to
serial conversion [F. Almasoudi et al (2013)].
In the receiver part , the received signal now in serial sequence , so its converted
to parallel and the guard interval is removed [S. X. Ng L. Hanzo(2004)].The
signal now passes throw the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) stage , and is
demodulated using M-ary demodulator which could be either QAM or PSK .At
the end the data in parallel sequence are converted to serial to get the original
data.
2.4.1 SERIAL TO PARALLEL CONVERSION
After the conversion of Binary values to complex values , the data signals must
pass through a serial to parallel converter to get converted into parallel symbols.
These symbols must be arranged into subsets and each of the subset will carry
number of symbols that can be determined by number of subcarriers.
2.4.2 SYMBOL MAPPING
The basic function in OFDM that is usually taken is sinusoidal signal,
φ n ( t )=V ( t ) exp ⁡( j 2 π f n t) (2.4)
where V is the amplitude of the signal, f n is the frequency of the signal, and n is
the number of subcarriers.
Equation (2.4) can be rewrite as ,
φ n ( t )=V ( t ) cos ( j 2 π f n t ) + jV ( t ) sin ( j 2 π f n t )=I (t ) + jQ (t ) (2.5)
Where I(t) is the in-phase component and Q(t) is the Quadrature component. The
input data of in-phase and Quadrature component can be represented by using
equation. Different modulation techniques can be used for symbol mapping like
BPSK, DPSK,PSK,QAM,QPSK.

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Optical OFDM

2.4.3 INVERSE FAST FOURIER TRANSFORM (IFFT)

The main advantage of modern OFDM is the use of IFFT as it has the ability to
perform frequency up conversion and the multiplexing of Complex subcarriers in
an efficient way. At the Receiver side the FFT is used for demodulation and the
de-multiplexing.
The FFT algorithms ensures the orthogonality of subcarriers and will help to
avoid any interference. To maintain orthogonality between subcarriers is to keep
the subcarrier center frequency from overlapping with other subcarriers while the
subcarrier spectrum overlaps that provides orthogonal subsets [J. WeI(2010)].
Correlation between two subcarriers gives orthogonality as given by the
expression below :

1
T s
sin ⁡( π ( f h−f s ) T s)
∫
Ts 0
exp ⁡¿ ¿h- f s¿ t ¿ dt =exp ⁡¿h- f s¿ T s
(π ( f h−f s ) T s)
(2.1)

Where f h and f s are the subcarrier frequencies and T s is the symbol period.
The condition as given in equation 2.2 below,
1
f h−f s=m (2.2) If it gets satisfied,
Ts
the subcarriers are orthogonal to each other, and this condition will help to
recover the signal without Inter Carrier Interference (ICI).
Figure 2.4 shows a single signal and figure 2.5 shows the power signals where
their spectrums are overlapping with their centers equally spaced.

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Optical OFDM

Figure 2.5 OFDM for single bit [M.Jarajreh]

Figure 2.6 OFDM signals spectrum [M.Jarajreh]

2.4.4 CYCLIC PREFIX

It is used for the reduction of Inter Symbol Interference effect and to improve
multipath propagation problem. In this technique the data from last fraction of
data of each OFDM symbol is copied and added into front of the symbol.

Figure 2.7 Cyclic Prefix in OFDM [Alatawi]

Cyclic prefix operator can be defined as ,

Tp
𝛈¿
T s−T p
(2.3)
Where T p is the length of Cyclic Prefix, T s is the symbol length and difference of
both is the length of FFT [M. Jarajreh (2012)]
The length of Cyclic Prefix should be selected carefully to have minimum ISI
effect. The length of CP should be same as that of multipath delay, because if

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Optical OFDM

length is shorter than that of the delay the OFDM symbol will be affected by the
next OFDM symbol head that will cause ISI [Y.Zhao et al. (2001)].
After inserting the Cyclic Prefix, the OFDM symbols are passed through a
parallel to serial converter to convert the parallel OFDM symbols to serial
symbols data . After this conversion, the OFDM signals are forwarded for the up
conversion process.
Guard Intervals are essential to be inserted between OFDM symbols to prevent
Inter Symbol Interference and to maintain orthogonality. If there comes in delay
in the OFDM transmitted symbol then ISI occurs, which will cause this symbol to
interfere with the upcoming symbol. The guard interval is gap period that
provides protection to keep the transmitted symbol apart from the next OFDM
symbol. A guard interval is either zero padding or cyclic prefix.

2.5 OFDM DEMODULATION

Assume that a perfect estimation for the receiver is to be done, then the guard
interval will be removed .To get the original OFDM signal and Also, the cyclic
prefix CP which was added to the transmitter side to be removed, CP removal is
an easy process as shown in Figure 2.9, where the CP length should be removed
to get the original OFDM symbols.

Figure 2.8 OFDM Cyclic Prefix Removal [Alatawi]

2.5.1 FAST FOURIER TRANSFORM (FFT)

With the removal of the guard intervals, the OFDM symbols gets ready to enter
the next stage that is the Fast Fourier Transform , this can be done by converting
the real values to the frequency domain values. So FFT helps to recover the
subcarriers in one step without needing the large numbers of oscillators and
filters. After down conversion of the signal, the digital signal can be represented
by:

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Optical OFDM

( ) ∑ h s(k-η)+n(k)
k-1
2πkv
d ( k ) = exp j p (2.5)
NFFT p=0

where N FFT are the number of bytes, v is the carrier space offset, h p is the
complex gain, η is the path delay, and n(k) is the additive white Gaussian noise.

2.5.2 SYMBOL DEMAPPING

The binary information input is recovered as defined in equation (2.5) , the

original binary input was mapped in to complex valued signals. This depend on
the modulation type used in the transmitter, the same input information can be
recovered using the same modulation type at the receiver side. For example, if the
binary input is modulated by using 4-QAM, then there are four complex valued
signals on the constellation diagram. Therefore, before the de-mapping stage, the
received signal will have four complex valued signals. But the received signal
will have some noise and will not look exactly as the same in the transmitted
signal, due to equalization errors and phase shift introduced.
2.6 OPTICAL OFDM TRANSMISSION SYSTEMS
One possible way to categorize OFDM generators would be to classify them on
the basis of the type of subcarrier generation. This would give rise to two
different transmitter categories i.e. analog and digital generation. The first
category requires a complex integrated modulation, the second allows a simple
optics design with flexible and adaptive constellations at the receiver side of the
system. Therefore, the generation of subcarriers in the analog domain is not of
interest for the performed simulations in Chapter 3, and it will not be considered
in this work.
At the same time, optical OFDM systems with subcarriers generated in the digital
domain can be classified according to many other parameters. In order to
understand the system simulated in OPTISYSTEM , the most important ones are
the modulation technique used in the electrical to optical (E/O) conversion and
the type of detection used at the receiver.
Many system configurations will appear from the combinations of the
modulation techniques available and the type of detection at the receiver, though

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Optical OFDM

just one will be considered for the simulations in OPTISYSTEM. This will be
seen in Chapter 3.

2.6.1 MODULATION TECHNIQUES

The way in which data is allocated at the input sequence of the IFFT, it gives rise
to many different transmitter configurations. Thus, different optical modulations
should be applied depending on the type of electrical OFDM signal obtained at
the transmitter output and according to system requirement.
Here, two different configurations are discussed, one using a standard MZM and
the other based on an optical IQ modulation. Both of them avoid the transmission
impairments caused by dispersion.
2.6.1.1 INTENSITY MODULATION

Figure 2.9 RF upconversion based on Intensity Modulation[Abdullah Al Amin]

When optical modulation is performed over a baseband OFDM signal with a

standard MZM one of the two sidebands must be suppressed in presence of
dispersion. Thus, an optical low pass or band pass filter can be used for the
separation of both complex bands, requiring the allocation of a guard band with
respect to the carrier. If the size of this guard band is equal to the OFDM signal’s
bandwidth, direct detection can be used at the receiver.

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Optical OFDM

In this modulation, two DAC’s are used to convert the real and imaginary parts of
the electrical OFDM signal from the digital to the analog domain. Subsequently
an analog electrical IQ mixer allows both parts of the complex OFDM signal to
be sent as in phase and Quadrature signals over the RF frequency carrier, so that
the signal can be modulated with a standard MZM. In this configuration, the
whole input sequence of the IFFT is carrying data, though the zero padding
oversampling method as can be seen in figure 2.7 .

2.6.1.2 OPTICAL IQ MODULATION

Figure 2.10 IQ Optical Modulation Schemetic [Sander]

If an IQ MZM is used for the optical modulation of the electrical OFDM signal,
only one complex optical OFDM band is obtained, so no optical filter is required
here at the transmitter end. The resulting schematic for this technique is depicted
in Figure 2.8 above, where the real and imaginary components of the OFDM
signal are directly fed to the IQ MZM. In this case, oversampling is neglected for
simplicity. With the help of this scheme bandwidth of DAC is utilized.
Components needed in this scheme are more compared to the RF optical
modulation.
2.6.2 DETECTION TECHNIQUES
There are two basic techniques used for the demodulation of the optical signal
into the originally transmitted signal ,those techniques are Direct detection and
coherent detection .Both have their pros and cons and both are described in this
section.

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Optical OFDM

2.6.2.1 DIRECT DETECTION OPTICAL OFDM

Direct detection method uses RF up conversion with intensity modulation
technique at the receiver. The main characteristic of direct detection technique is
that it uses simple receiver.

Figure 2.11 Direct Detection Optical OFDM System [Sander]

In figure 2.19, it can be seen that the RF spectrum of intermodulation does not
overlap with the OFDM signal, means that intermodulation does not cause
deterimental effects after proper electrical filtering.
Once signal is photodetected, the electrical signal is down converted in to the
baseband signal in the opposite way as it was done at the transmitter side , before
applying the FFT to ideally recover the transmitted original subcarriers.
Thus, if the optical OFDM band is located close to the optical carrier in the
frequency domain, the intra mixing products are located in the same frequency
range as the electrical OFDM signal leading to performance degradation.

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Optical OFDM

Taking all this into account, it can be said that the optical bandwidth
requirements for direct detection optical OFDM are determined both by the
OFDM band and the gap between the OFDM band and the optical carrier, always
omitting one optical sideband. Typically the width of gap is equal to the width of
the OFDM band in minimum.

2.6.2.2 COHERENT DETECTION OPTICAL OFDM

The second type of optical detection is Coherent detection. It represents best

performance in reciever sensitivity, spectral efficiency and robustness against
polarization dispersion but it requires highly complex designed transmitter.
In coherent OFDM systems, the optical carrier is not transmitted with the optical
OFDM signal, but it is generated locally by a laser. It makes this kind of system
to require less transmitted optical power than direct detection design, although it
is more sensitive to phase noise.

Figure 2.12 Coherent detection at Reciever side [Sander]

In this case, the local oscillator is placed in the middle of the OFDM signal.
Essentially, this implementation is the reverse of the transmitter using the optical
IQ mixer as in figure 2.8. Thus, it shares almost the same advantages and
disadvantages like the FFT size and ADC bandwidths can be used for data
modulation if there is no oversampling and few components are used, though it
requires two ADCs and the IQ MZM at the transmitter side which has three bias
voltages that need to be adjusted.
The optical bandwidth requirement for CO-OFDM are much lower compared to
direct detection because there is no need to transmit an optical carrier with the

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Optical OFDM

required gap to the OFDM band in addition to the modulated subcarriers. This
increases spectral efficiency twice than that of direct detection.

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