DESCRIBE SUB CARRIER INTENSITY MODULATION AND SUB

CARRIER FREQUENCY MODULATION IN CONTEXT OF OPTICAL

FIBER

1) SUB CARRIER INTENSITY MODULATION

In optical communications, intensity modulation (IM) is a form of modulation in

which the optical power output of a source is varied in accordance with some
characteristic of the modulating signal. The envelope of the modulated optical signal is
an analog of the modulating signal in the sense that the instantaneous power of the
envelope is an analog of the characteristic of interest in the modulating signal.

Direct intensity modulation of the optical source is suitable for the transmission of a
baseband analog signal. However, if the wideband nature of the optical fiber medium
is to be fully utilized it is essential that a number of baseband channels are multiplexed
onto a single fiber link. This may be achieved with analog transmission through
frequency division multiplexing of the individual baseband channels. Initially, the
baseband channels must be translated onto carriers of different frequency by amplitude
modulation (AM), frequency modulation (FM) or phase modulation (PM) prior to
being simultaneously transmitted as a frequency division multiplexing signal. The
frequency translation may be performed in the electrical regime where the baseband
analog signals modulate electrical subcarriers and are then frequency division
multiplexed to form a composite electrical signal prior to intensity modulation of the
optical source.

A block schematic of an analog system employing this technique, which is known

as subcarrier intensity modulation, is shown. The baseband signals are modulated onto
radio-frequency (RF) subcarriers by either AM, FM or PM and multiplexed before
being applied to the optical source drive circuit.

Hence an intensity modulated (IM) optical signal is obtained which may be AM–IM,
FM–IM or PM–IM.

In practice, however, system output SNR considerations dictate that generally only the
latter two modulation formats are used. Nevertheless, systems may incorporate two
levels of electrical modulation whereby the baseband channels are initially amplitude
modulated prior to FM or PM. The FM or PM signal thus obtained is then used to
intensity modulate the optical source. At the receive terminal the transmitted optical
signal is detected prior to electrical demodulation and demultiplexing (filtering) to
obtain the originally transmitted baseband signals.

A further major advantage of subcarrier intensity modulation is the possible

improvement in SNR that may be obtained during subcarrier demodulation. In order to
investigate this process it is necessary to obtain a general expression for the SNR of
the IM optical carrier which may then be applied to the subcarrier intensity modulation
formats. Therefore, an electrical signal m(t) modulates the source intensity.
The transmitted optical power waveform is of the same form, where:

Popt(t) = Pi (1 + m(t))

Also the secondary photon I(t) generated at an APD receiver is given by:

I(t) = IpM (1 + m(t))

The mean square signal current i2sig may be written as:

i2sig = (Ip M)2 Pm

where Pm is the total power of m(t), which can be defined in terms of the spectral
density Sm() of m(t) occupying a one-sided bandwidth Bm Hz as:

P= Sm() d

Hence the SNR defined in terms of the mean square signal current to mean square
noise current (i.e. rms signal power to rms noise power) using Eqs (12.77) and (12.66)
can now be written as:

where we substitute for Ip and for notational simplicity write:

The result obtained gives the SNR for a direct intensity modulated optical source
where the total modulating signal power is Pm.
2) SUB CARRIER FREQUENCY MODULATION

In this modulation format, the subcarrier is frequency modulated by the message

signal.
The conventional form for representing the baseband signal which intensity modulates
the optical source is:

Where kf is the angular frequency deviation in radians per second per unit of a(t). To
prevent intensity overmodulation, the carrier amplitude Ac ≤1. The generally accepted
expression for the bandwidth, which is referred to as Carson’s rule, is given by:

Bm ≈ 2(Df 1)Ba

where Df is the frequency deviation ratio defined by:

𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑘 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑦 𝑑𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑓𝑑

Df   
𝑏𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑤𝑖𝑑𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑎(𝑡) 𝐵𝑎

The peak frequency deviation in the subcarrier FM signal fd is given by:
fd kf maxa(t) 

Hence the SNR at the input to the subcarrier FM demodulator is:

The subcarrier demodulator operating above threshold yields an output SNR:

Substituting for Bm:

The result obtained in the above equation indicates that a significant improvement in the post-detection SNR may be
achieved by using wideband FM–IM.