Nonlinear

Effect of OFDM in Radio-over-Fiber

transmission
Zhang Bo, Lu Yinghua, Zhang Jinling, Yang Biao
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications
PO Box 214, Xi Tu Cheng Road 10, BeiJing, CHINA, 100876
Tel: 86-10-62283303, E-mail: zhbomailWgmail.com

Abstract This paper is concerned with the analysis of the

nonlinear distortion of Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplex
(OFDM) signals caused by semiconductor laser in a Radio-overFiber link. A third order polynomial without memory is used to
present the nonlinearity of semiconductor laser. The expression of
in-band noise due to nonlinear distortion is then derived. Moreover,
the relation of carrier-to-noise ratio with optical modulation index
is analyzed. The analytical method is applicable for nonlinearity
analysis and useful to select the optical modulation index of OFDMROF system.
-

Index Terms- radio

over

fiber; nonlinearity; OFDM;.

I.

INTRODUCTION

In the case of further wireless communication system

significant effort is done to reduce the multipath fading and to
have low-cost and small base station matched to demands made
by the bigger number of mobile cells and high frequency
applications. To meet these requirements one of best solution is
the combination of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
(OFDM) digital modulation and radio over fiber (ROF)
technology. OFDM is seen as the modulation technique for
future broadband wireless communications because it provides
increased robustness against frequency selective fading and
narrowband interference, and is efficient in dealing with multipath delay spread [l]. It present a suitable solution for indoor
wireless access, wireless LAN and LMDS. However, this
modulation scheme is sensitive to the nonlinear effects in the

in[2].

link

The use of radio over fiber to provide radio access has a

number of advantages including the ability to deploy small, lowcost remote antenna units and ease of upgrade. Actually, some
kinds of ROF link has been developed to support further
wireless system, such as WLAN, ITS and next generation
cellular system[3]. Transmitting analog RF signal through ROF
link, a common problem is semiconductor laser nonlinearity[45].
There have been a number of publications on the laser
nonlinearity analysis when use standard modulation scheme
including multilevel QAM, CDMA etc[6,7]. The nonlinearity
knowledge of OFDM is useful for system design and
performance analysis. Some works have done to study OFDM
,

transmission performance through the nonlinearity of fiber-radio

link, however these researches mainly focus on discussing the
nonlinearity of external modulator such as Mach-Zehnder
modulator89]. With semiconductor laser nonlinearity it is
necessary to select an optimal modulation index that provides a
maximum carrier-to-noise ratio (C/N).A third order polynomial
without memory is used to present laser nonlinearity[10] and
nonlinearity on CDMA is analyzed in [7, 11] using this method.
In this paper, we deal with ROF link applying direct intensity
modulation and direct detection (IM-DD). An analytical method
is proposed to evaluate the effects of semiconductor laser
nonlinearity on OFDM signal. And the relation of C/N ratio and
optical modulation m is also studied.
RF out

RE in

-*Laserdiode

Photodiode
fiber

RE

out

RE in

-Photodiode

Laserdiode <

Fig. 1. the layout of a ROF optical link using direct modulation laser diodes.

II.

RADIO OVER FIBER LINK

IM-DD links are used in cellular applications for reasons of

simplicity and cost. Fig.1 shows the layout of a simple
bidirectional directly modulated radio over fiber link. In each
direction the imput RF signal is applied to a laser diode where it
modulates the intensity of the output light. In most cases this
light was semiconductor laser which is operated at 1300nm or
1550 nm for low transmission loss in silica fiber. The optical
receiver usually consists of a p-i-n photodiode, which provides
an RF power output proportional to the square of the input
optical power.

III. REPRESENTATION OF IN-BAND DISTORTION NOISE

The OFDM signal can be modeled (for a high number of

independently modulated carriers) like a complex Gaussian
process with Rayleigh envelope distribution[2]. This allows the
analytical treatment of nonlinear OFDM systems making use of
the more general results for nonlinear distortions of Gaussian
signals. Therefore, Rice's transform method&12] was applied to
derive the power spectra of the output and the induced distortion
noise falling into the signal band. Specifically, the output
autocorrelation function can be expressed as
R (r) = hj2 +2
n=l

FR

h2n-I

(r1

Rx(

(2n -1) ! L RX (0)

modulation bandwidth, a nonlinear semiconductor laser without

memory can be presented by a third order polynomial as[7 10]
y a0+alx+a2x +a3x
(6)
where y is the optical power output modulated by current signal
x and a1, a2, a3 are constants determined by the semiconductor
laser used. For ideal linear laser, a2=a3=0, the optical power
output is proportional to the modulating signals. For practical
semiconductor laser, a2 and a3 are unequal to zero which produce
the noise. In-band noise is produced by x3 term, so we substitute
a3x3 in (2) to get hk. It is not difficult to integrate, and only h3
term exists in the result. It can be expressed

(1)

h3
where

Where RX(I) is the autocorrelation function of the input OFDM

signal, and the coefficients

hk=

ue j
| ue 2g(x)e

*k

+ +

xdxdu

(2)

distortion noise spectral density is given by

S'

jn(r)

Z2n-I
n=2 (2n -1)!

ej2 7fTd

(f)

(52 )2nlI

S (f) = {

f o <B12

IV. CARRIER-TO-NoISE ANALYSIS OF OFDM-ROF SYSTEM

Beside the nonlinear effect, semiconductor laser relative

intensity noise, shot noise and thermal circuit noise are the
factors that reduce the system performance. At the transmitter,
the semiconductor laser has intensity fluctuation that is
presented by [7]
K 'shot)

(5)

For the link between BS and CS, OFDM signal is used to

modulate the optical intensity of semiconductor laser. The
nonlinear characteristics of semiconductor laser influence the
system performance. Because the signal bandwidth is small
compared with the bandwidth of semiconductor laser

2qi Pr

where RIN is relative intensity noise (RIN) density for the

semiconductor laser output. Also, at the receiver, there are shot
noise and thermal circuit noise being presented, respectively, as

KILD) =RIN x (71Pr )2

12\

it

(4)

otherwise
Integral range is form fo-B/2 to fo+B/2 because we only consider
in-band noise. And in-band noise can be expressed as[12]

h2
Pin-band 2h3!

R (O).

As a consequence, the in-band noise expression of OFDM can

be derived by substituting (7) in (5).

(3)

Sx (f ) * * Sx (f), denotes (2n-1)

times convolution of Sf(f), which is the Fourier transform of
RX(l). The spectral density S,(f) is of rectangular shape, that is
Where

(7)

2/7Z(X _00 -oo

The first term in (1) is the DC term, the n=1 term is the signal
term, and n>1 terms represent the induced distortion noise.
These expressions are in agreement with [12]. Then the total
S (f) =h2

2 =

=6a3(-X

_4kTF
RL

where k is the Boltzmann constant, T is the absolute

temperature, F is the noise factor, RL is load impedance, q is an
electron charge, ri is the sensitivity of PIN, P, is the average
n(t)
transmitting optical power.
OFDM
source

gLasnr (C) mPhotofr

d'odec
dectector

tlin

Fig.2. C/N analytical model of fiber-optic link

FDM
receiver

The C/N analytical model of fiber-optic link is shown in Fig.2.

Therefore, considering the above noise for a given band width B,
the C/N for this link is presented as

IF in the circuit was not considered in this paper, and these

factors will be the subject of future work.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

(mq7 Pr)2
97

The project was supported by Open Fund of Key Laboratory

~~~~~~~~~(8)of Optical Communication and Lightwave Technologies
(Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Ministry
of Education , P.R.China). The research was also supported by
It is observable that, in (8), C/N is the function of optical
National Science Foundation (No.60671055, which is a grant
modulation index. The optical modulation index must be
from Committee of National Science Foundation, China.
selected to avoid overmodulation. In Fig.3, C/N as a function of
REFERENCES
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15-

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US
0, 1

o.15

0,2

0125

UH

Optical modulation index

Fig.3. C/N versus optical modulation index m

(1.3 pm DFB-Laser: RIN=--l5dB/Hz; P,=2mW.
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V.

[7]

[8]

CONCLUSION

The behavior of an OFDM signal in IM-DD radio-over-fiber

link is investigated. By using the third-order polynomial without
memory presenting semiconductor nonlinearity, the in-band
noise of OFDM due to nonlinearity of semiconductor laser is
analyzed. And C/N of the fiber-optic link is investigated. With
the nonlinearity of semiconductor laser it is necessary to select
an optical modulation index to provide a maximal C/N. The
theoretical analytical method is applicable to OFDM-ROF
system. On the other hand, the noise produced by amplifier and

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