JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 24, NO.

1, JANUARY 2006 429

High-Speed Transmission of Adaptively Modulated
Optical OFDM Signals Over Multimode Fibers
Using Directly Modulated DFBs
J. M. Tang, P. M. Lane, and K. Alan Shore, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractA novel optical signal modulation concept of adap-
tively modulated optical orthogonal frequency division multiplex-
ing (AMOOFDM) is proposed, and a comprehensive theoretical
model of AMOOFDM modems is developed. Numerical simula-
tions of the transmission performance of the AMOOFDM signals
are undertaken in unamplied multimode ber (MMF)-based
links using directly modulated distributed feedback (DFB) lasers
(DMLs). It is shown that 28 Gb/s over 300 m and 10 Gb/s over
900 m transmission of intensity modulation and direct detection
(IMDD) AMOOFDM signals at 1550 nm is feasible in DML-
based links using MMFs with 3-dB effective bandwidths of
200 MHz km. Apart from a higher signal capacity, AMOOFDM
also has a greater spectral efciency and is less susceptible to
different launching conditions, modal dispersion, and ber types,
compared with all existing schemes. In addition, a large noise
margin of about 15 dB is also observed. The bits of resolution
of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and the cyclic prex of
AMOOFDM symbols are the main factors limiting the maximum
achievable performance, on which the inuence of DMLs is,
however, negligible under the optimum operating condition.
Index TermsCommunication system performance, optical
ber communication, optical modulation, orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (OFDM).
I. INTRODUCTION
M
OST INSTALLED Ethernet backbones based on multi-
mode bers (MMFs) operate at bit rates of about 1 Gb/s,
which is inadequate for current and emerging demand. Great
effort has been expended on exploring cost-effective solutions
for upgrading 1 Gb/s Ethernet backbones to 10 Gb/s and
above [1], [2]. Enterprise customers prefer to use their already-
installed MMFs rather than pulling new bers to upgrade their
backbones as signicant cost savings can be realized. Installed
MMF links, however, exhibit considerable bandwidth variation.
Field measurements showed that [3] the 3-dB bandwidth under
radially overlled launching (ROFL) at 1.3 m ranges from
200 to 2600 MHz km with 17% being even less than the over-
lled launching (OFL) bandwidthlength product specication
of 500 MHz km at this wavelength, and that the abovemen-
tioned 3-dB bandwidth deviation is almost doubled for central
Manuscript received June 14, 2005; revised September 7, 2005. This work
was supported in part by the Research Capacity Development Fund (RCDF) of
the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW).
The authors are with the School of Informatics, University of Wales,
Bangor, Bangor LL57 1UT, U.K. (e-mail: jianming@informatics.bangor.ac.uk;
p.m.lane@informatics.bangor.ac.uk; alan@informatics.bangor.ac.uk).
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/JLT.2005.860146
launching condition at 1.3 m. However, there are still about
3% MMFs having the 3-dB effective bandwidth less than the
OFL bandwidthlength product specication of 500 MHz km.
In addition, the 3-dB effective bandwidth is also very sensitive
to different restricted launching conditions including central,
small offset, and conventional offset launching [4].
The primary technical difculty in upgrading installed 1 Gb/s
Ethernet backbones to 10 Gb/s and above is the highly variable
modal dispersion present in the graded index ber, which
causes the large bandwidth variation noted above. The IEEE
standards organization set up the IEEE 802.3eq 10GbE Study
Group to investigate the use of 10BASE-serial techniques to
reach 220300 m on installed ber distributed data interface
(FDDI)-grade MMFs [2]. A wide range of solutions are be-
ing investigated to enhance the transmission performance of
MMFs and to simultaneously preserve the existing infrastruc-
ture. Strategies include, for example, the use of low-cost coarse
wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) [5], offset launch [4],
multilevel coding [6], spatially resolved receivers [7], electrical
equalization in the receiver based on a nonlinear adaptive de-
cision feedback equalizer [8][10], and polarization controlled
launch [11]. Each of the aforementioned schemes can provide
a substantial improvement in the transmission capacity of ex-
isting MMF links by making use of the baseband bandwidth
of the frequency response of the ber. However, the wide
passband region of the frequency response is ignored in all
these schemes. By using subcarrier modulation (SCM) [12],
where the signal frequency is upconverted and subsequently
transmitted in a favorite passband region of the frequency
response, penalty-free transmission of 2.5 Gb/s data over
300 m was demonstrated experimentally in a worst case MMF
with a 3-dB effective bandwidth of 300 MHz km at 1.3 m
[12]. In particular, by combining SCM with dense WDM, a
40 5.1 Gb/s WDM/SCM system over both 500 m of worst
case 62.5 m MMFs and 3 km of 50 m MMFs was achieved
experimentally [13].
Owing to its suitability for transmission of information over
highly variable dispersive channels, orthogonal frequency divi-
sion multiplexing (OFDM) has been widely used in wireless,
wireline, and broadcast networks [14]. The signal capacities
in these systems are, however, usually lower than 100 Mb/s.
By introducing OFDM into the optical domain, an advanced
optical OFDM (OOFDM) modulation technique was proposed
recently [15], and experimental measurements showed that
10 Gb/s intensity modulation and direct detection (IMDD)
0733-8724/$20.00 2006 IEEE
430 JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 24, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006
differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) OOFDM
signals can transmit over 1000 m in an MMF link employ-
ing a directly modulated distributed feedback (DFB) laser
(DML) [15].
In this paper, a novel optical signal modulation concept
of adaptively modulated OOFDM (AMOOFDM) is proposed,
whereby individual subcarriers of an OOFDM symbol are
manipulated in the frequency domain by using different modu-
lation formats according to the frequency response of a given
transmission link. A comprehensive theoretical model of the
AMOOFDM modems is developed, and numerical simulations
of the transmission performance of the IMDD AMOOFDM
signals are undertaken in unamplied MMF-based links using
DMLs. It is shown that 28 Gb/s IMDD AMOOFDM signals
can be transmitted over 300 m in unamplied DML-based
links using MMFs with 3-dB effective bandwidths as small as
200 MHz km. This capacity versus reach is far beyond the
performance achieved by using all existing schemes. Apart
from that, the proposed technique can also signicantly im-
prove tolerance to ber modal dispersion, variation in launching
conditions and ber types, and considerably enhance spectral
efciency.
Apart from the unique features mentioned above, the
AMOOFDM signal modulation technique also reveals the fol-
lowing characteristics:
1) Signicant exibility and robust performance: Through
negotiations between the transmitter and the receiver,
optimized transmission performance is always achievable
regardless of ber types, launching conditions and trans-
mission distances. This feature may lead to a solution that
one box ts all applications.
2) Efcient use of the spectral characteristics of transmis-
sion links: AMOOFDM is capable of exploiting the ber
bandwidth to its full potential. This technique has a spec-
tral efciency that signicantly exceeds limits associated
with all traditional signal modulations and digital signal
processing.
3) Reutilization of legacy MMFs: It is not necessary for
users to pull new bers for upgrading their already-
installed 1 Gb/s Ethernet backbones to 10 Gb/s and above.
4) Cost effective in system installation and maintenance:
It is estimated that the cost of an AMOOFDM modem
that remains constant for signal bit rates up to about
30 Gb/s would be about 25% of a commercially available
optical modem designed for 10 Gb/s Metro transmission
systems. It is also expected that the maintenance cost
is low due to its robust to environmental changes, as
discussed in Section VI.
Therefore, this paper will demonstrate a great opportunity
for providing a cost-effective high-speed solution with excel-
lent exibility and robustness for upgrading installed 1 Gb/s
Ethernet backbones to 10 Gb/s and above.
To exploit thoroughly the AMOOFDM technique in terms of
its research value and great potential in practical applications, a
large number of important aspects should be addressed in detail.
As an initial phase of the work, the main aims of this paper are
as follows: 1) to exploit the fundamental operating principle
of the proposed technique; 2) to identify key parameters lim-
iting the maximum achievable performance of the technique
for the purpose of producing design guidelines on possible
future development of optimum AMOOFDM modems; and
3) to demonstrate the practically obtainable capacity versus
reach performance of the AMOOFDM signals in worst case
MMF links by considering practically achievable parameters.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, a com-
prehensive theoretical model is developed for describing the
generation, transmission, and detection of IMDD AMOOFDM
signals in MMF-based transmission links. In addition, a math-
ematical description of the DML used here is also presented
to provide an in-depth understanding of the nonlinear effect
of DMLs. In Section III, the parameters adopted in the nu-
merical simulations are appropriate to commercially available
components. In the same section, the operating principle of the
technique is also illustrated. In Section IV, following discus-
sions on choosing optimum operating conditions of DFB lasers,
key factors limiting the maximum achievable performance of
the technique are identied through extensive simulations of
the transmission performance over a wide range of link para-
meters. As an example, the transmission performance of the
technique in worst case MMF links is discussed in Section V. In
Section VI, the viability of the proposed technique is addressed
for practical applications in the vast majority of installed MMF
links. Finally, this paper is summarized in Section VII.
II. TRANSMISSION LINK MODEL
In this section, a comprehensive theoretical model is devel-
oped to simulate the generation, transmission, and detection of
IMDD AMOOFDM signals in unamplied MMF-based links
using DFB lasers.
A. Transmission Link and AMOOFDM Modem Diagram
A typical MMF-based transmission link considered here is
shown in Fig. 1, where the block diagrams of the transmitter
and the receiver are also illustrated. This transmission link
consists of the transmitter and the receiver linked by MMFs
[1]. It should be noted that optical ampliers and dispersion
compensation bers are not involved in the link for the purpose
of reducing the cost of the transmission link.
As shown in Fig. 1, in the transmitter, an incoming bi-
nary data sequence is encoded to a serial complex numbers
by using signal modulation formats varying from differential
binary phase shift keying (DBPSK), DQPSK, and 16 quadratic-
amplitude modulation (QAM) to 256QAM. A serial-to-parallel
converter truncates the encoded complex data sequence into a
large number of sets of closely and equally spaced narrowband
data, the so-called subcarriers, and each set contains the same
number of subcarriers. An inverse Fourier transform (IFFT)
is then applied to each set of subcarriers to generate parallel
real-valued AMOOFDMsymbols. These AMOOFDMsymbols
are serialized to form a long digital signal sequence. Finally, a
digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is used to convert the digital
data sequence into an analog signal waveform, which is ready
to directly drive a DFB laser to produce an optical AMOOFDM
signal waveform; the optical signal is coupled into an MMF
TANG et al.: HIGH-SPEED TRANSMISSION OF ADAPTIVELY MODULATED OPTICAL OFDM SIGNALS 431
Fig. 1. Transmission link diagramtogether with block diagrams of the Tx and the Rx. SMF is the single-mode ber. In the initial stage of establishing a connection
over an MMF, negotiations between the Tx and the Rx take place to identify the modulation format, which should be used on each of subcarriers within an
AMOOFDM symbol.
link under a specic launching condition. In the receiver, the
optical signal emerging from the MMF link is detected by a
photodetector. After passing through a low-bandpass lter and
an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), the electrical signal is
decoded into the original sequence by the receiver, which is the
inverse of the transmitter.
B. AMOOFDM Modems
Based on the general concept of OFDM presented in [14]
and [16], a theoretical model of the proposed AMOOFDM
modems is developed, whose mathematical description is given
in details in Sections II-B1 and B2. It should be pointed out that,
the back-to-back performance of the developed AMOOFDM
model shows excellent agreement with theoretical predictions
[17] for signals using identical modulation formats across all
subcarriers. More importantly, the feasibility of this model has
been veried by the agreement obtained between the theoretical
results and experimental measurements for transmission of
10 Gb/s IMDD DQPSK optical OOFDM signals in a 1000-m
MMF link employing a DFB laser [15].
1) AMOOFDM Transmitters: As discussed in Section II-A,
a serial-to-parallel converter truncates an encoded complex
data sequence into a number of sets of subcarriers. The kth
subcarrier in the nth AMOOFDM symbol d
k,n
is given by
d
k,n
=

R
k,n
e
j
k,n
K
k

h(t) (1)
where the terms in the brackets in the right-hand side of
(1) represent the kth encoded data in the nth symbol with
the time period of T
b
, R
k,n
and
k,n
are dened as R
k,n
=
(x
2
k,n
+y
2
k,n
)
1/2
and
k,n
= tan
1
(y
k,n
/x
k,n
) with x
k,n
and
y
k,n
being the coordinates of signal constellation points, K
k
is the parameter for adjusting the power of each subcarrier,
and h(t) is the modulation pulse shaping waveform, which is
used to make different subcarriers orthogonal to each other. It
is widely adopted [14] that h(t) has a rectangular pulse shape
of unity magnitude over the period of T
b
. Apart from real
transmitted data, d
k,n
also represents pilots and training signals.
The AMOOFDM symbol is constructed as the IFFT of the
set of subcarriers. The nth AMOOFDM symbol

S
n
(t) can be
described as

S
n
(t) =
N
s
1

k=0
d
k,n
e
j2kft
(2)
where N
s
is the total number of subcarriers within the
AMOOFDM symbol, and f is the subcarrier frequency spac-
ing. The symbol is a periodic function with a time period of
T
b
= 1/f. Note that in this case, each subcarrier has exactly
an integer number of oscillating cycles in the time interval
T
b
, and the number of oscillating cycles between adjacent
subcarriers differs exactly by one. This property accounts for
the orthogonality between different subcarriers.
The AMOOFDM symbol traveling in a transmission link
suffers from intersymbol interference (ISI). The ISI effect can
be overcome by adding a cyclic prex to the front of each
AMOOFDM symbol [14][16]. The cyclic prex is essentially
a copy of the last fraction of each AMOOFDM symbol and
does not carry any useful information. After inserting the cyclic
prex into the AMOOFDM symbol, the resulting AMOOFDM
symbol can be expressed as

S
n
(t) = e
j2fT
P
N
s
1

k=0
d
k,n
e
j2kft
(3)
where T
P
is the time duration of the cyclic prex, and the
time period during which real information is carried is now
reduced to T
b
T
P
. If the cyclic prex is larger than the
expected largest delay spread to be encountered on the channel
432 JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 24, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006
of interest, the channel dispersive effect is, therefore, localized
within the prex region only. After removing the prex in
the receiver, the fast Fourier transform (FFT) can proceed on
the useful AMOOFDM symbols without interference between
different symbols. Therefore, the cyclic prex improves the
ISI tolerance. However, the insertion of the cyclic prex also
increases the bandwidth associated with the encoded signal
by a factor of (1 +); here, the cyclic prex parameter is
dened as = T
P
/(T
b
T
P
). It should be pointed out that the
introduction of the cyclic prex destroys the perfect orthogonal-
ity between subcarriers, because the subcarriers may not have
exactly an integer number of cycles within the symbol period.
To generate the AMOOFDM signal sequence for signal
transmission, all the AMOOFDM symbols obtained using (3)
should be serialized. The concatenation of these AMOOFDM
symbols can now be written as

A(t) =

n=

S
n
(t nT
b
)
=

n=
e
j2fT
P
N
s
1

k=0
d
k,n
e
j2kf(tnT
b
)
. (4)
It can be seen from (4) that

A(t) is a complex function, which
cannot be used to directly drive the DFB laser. To obtain a real-
valued AMOOFDM signal, the general approach for generating
AMOOFDM symbols as described in (3) should be modied.
Based on the folding property of discrete Fourier transform for
discrete time systems [18], (3) should be written as
S
n
(t) = e
j2fT
P
2N
s
1

k=0
d
ck,n
e
j2kft
(5)
here, for subcarriers at 0, 1, . . . , N
s
2, N
s
1, N
s
,
N
s
+ 1, . . . , 2N
s
2, 2N
s
1, d
ck,n
takes the sequence of
{d
0,n
, d
1,n
, . . . , d
(N
s
2),n
, d
(N
s
1),n
, d

0,n
, d

1,n
, . . . , d

(N
s
2),n
,
d

(N
s
1),n
}. d
k,n
(k = 0, 1, . . . , N
s
2, N
s
1) is given in
(1) and d

k,n
is the complex conjugate of d
k,n
. In addition,
to achieve Im(S
n
(t)) = 0, Im(d
0,n
) = Im(d

0,n
) = 0 should be
satised. Considering the complex nature of the encoded data,
the only way for satisfying this requirement is to set the
powers on these two subcarriers to zero. This means that
these two subcarriers are simply dropped off and not utilized
for transmitting information. In (5), both the total number
of subcarriers and the signal bandwidth are doubled when
compared with (3). Subcarriers in both the negative and pos-
itive frequency bins carry information. However, information
contained in the positive frequency bin is recovered in the
receiver after transmission. Introducing (5) into (4), the real-
valued AMOOFDM signal is given by
A(t) =

n=
S
n
(t nT
b
)
=

n=
e
j2fT
P
2N
s
1

k=0
d
ck,n
e
j2kf(tnT
b
).
(6)
To limit the AMOOFDM signal power given in (6) within
a predetermined range, signal clipping is used. For a given
clipping level of , the clipped signal has the form
A
clip
(t)

A(t),

A(t)

e
j arg[A(t)]
,

A(t)

>
(7)
where, is dened as =

P
m
with P
m
being the mean
signal power. It can be found that clipping introduces waveform
distortions, which may be signicant for high signal modulation
format levels.
A
clip
(t) is a digital signal waveform. To directly drive the
DML, a DAC is required to convert A
clip
(t) into an analog
signal waveform A
DAC
(t). There are two parameters associ-
ated with the DAC signicantly affecting A
DAC
(t), namely:
1) the resolution; and 2) the sampling rate. It is easy to under-
stand that the DAC resolution sets a limitation on the maximum
signal modulation format that can be used on each subcarrier;
while the sampling rate determines the frequency of occurrence
of AMOOFDM samples. In the absence of the cyclic prex,
this frequency corresponds to the DAC sampling rate. In the
presence of the cyclic prex, the relationship between the DAC
sampling rate r
s
and the characteristics of the AMOOFDM
waveform is summarized as follows: 1) the transmitted band-
width of encoded signals corresponding to the positive fre-
quency bin is BW = r
s
/2; and 2) the AMOOFDM symbol
length is 2N
s
(1 +)/r
s
.
2) AMOOFDM Receivers: The continuous real-valued sig-
nal waveform A
DAC
(t) is able to directly drive a DFB laser
to produce an optical waveform A
OPTICAL
(t). The optical
signal is then coupled into an MMF link under a specic
launching condition. The transmitted optical signal is detected
by a square-law photodetector. The detected signal is given by
A
ELECTRICAL
(t) = |A
OPTICAL
(t)|
2
R(t) +v(t) (8)
where R(t) is the impulse response of the transmission link
in the electrical domain and v(t) represents noise associated
with the receiver, which is simulated using the same proce-
dure as that presented in [19]. In this paper, both shot and
thermal noises are considered, while signalspontaneous and
spontaneousspontaneous beat noises are excluded due to the
absence of optical ampliers in the transmission link.
The AMOOFDM receiver processes the electrical signal
A
ELECTRICAL
(t) using the inverse of the procedure used at
the transmitter: An ADC rst converts the electrical signal into
a digital waveform, the waveform is then aligned into a number
of AMOOFDM symbols. After removing the cyclic prex, an
FFT is applied to each symbol. The subcarriers in the positive
frequency bin are nally serialized, from which the original
data stream can be recovered using the known modulation
format on each subcarrier.
C. DFB Lasers
Direct modulation of laser drive current introduces a non-
linear frequency chirp to the optical eld, which varies with
both the drive current and the optical characteristics. Typically,
TANG et al.: HIGH-SPEED TRANSMISSION OF ADAPTIVELY MODULATED OPTICAL OFDM SIGNALS 433
the output optical signal shows a resonance close to the highest
frequencies required for 10 Gb/s modulation, therefore, both the
amplitude response and the response to chromatic dispersion
during propagation are signicantly different from externally
modulated devices.
A comprehensive DFB model [20] was reported to simulate
the performance of the DFB laser with high accuracy. This
model requires a detailed knowledge of device construction
and material parameters, and simulation times are rather long.
Based on a comprehensive DFB model [20], a lumped DFB
model is developed here, taking into account longitudinal-mode
spatial hole burning, linear and nonlinear carrier recombination,
and nonlinear gain effects. The simulation time of the lumped
model is reduced to several seconds, while the output optical
characteristics under normal operating conditions are similar to
that obtained by using the full model [20] at reasonable accu-
racy. The feasibility of the developed DFB model is also veri-
ed by good agreement with experimental measurements [15].
The time-varying response of the laser depends on interac-
tions within the laser cavity between the carrier densities and
the photons. This process is described by the coupled ordinary
differential equations given as
dN
dt
=
I
d
edwl

N

c
BN
2
CN
3
G
(N N
t
)
1 +
(9)
d
dt
=
G(N N
t
)
1 +
+BN
2

P
(10)
where N and are the carrier density and the photon density,
respectively, I
d
is the current drive into the active region
of the laser with length l, width w, and thickness d, e is
the electronic charge,
c
is the carrier linear recombination
lifetime, representing nonradiative loss mechanisms, B is the
bimolecular carrier recombination coefcient, representing the
rate at which electrons and holes recombine with spontaneous
emission of radiation, C is the Auger carrier recombination
coefcient, which is a nonradiative loss mechanism, G is the
linear gain coefcient, which describes the absorption and
stimulated emission of photons, N
t
is the transparency carrier
density, is the nonlinear gain coefcient, which describes
a reduction in the gain mechanism at high photon densities
because of ultrafast carrier processes such as carrier heating
and spectral hole burning [21], is the mode connement fac-
tor, which describes the vertical overlap between the conned
carrier region and the optical region,
p
is the photon lifetime,
which is closely related to the round trip time within the cavity
and depends on cavity length, waveguide loss, grating, and
facet reectivities, and describes the fraction of spontaneous
emission that is emitted into the fundamental mode of the laser,
which will be negligible under normal operating conditions but
determines the laser turn-on delay when driven from close to or
below threshold.
It is assumed that all photons reaching the exit facet are
emitted, so the output optical power is
P = w
v
w
h
hv
c
2n
g
(11)
where w
v
and w
h
are the vertical and horizontal widths of the
guided mode power distributions, h is the Plancks constant, c
is the velocity of light in vacuum, hv is the photon energy, n
g
is
the group index, and the factor of 2 in accounts for bidirectional
propagation of photons in the cavity.
If the optical frequency tracks the resonant frequency of the
DFB cavity, the evolution of optical phase is governed by
d
dt
=
(N N
t
)
n
p
(12)
where is the optical phase, is the linewidth enhancement
factor, and n
p
is the phase refractive index. The optical fre-
quency is given by
=
0

1
(N N
t
)
n
p

. (13)
Equations (9)(13) are the nal equations for simulating the
performance of the DFB laser involved in the transmission
link. Because there is no attempt to model input parasitic
components that will modify the electrical drive current wave-
form, a low-bandpass lter with 7.5 GHz roll-off frequency
is inserted between the DAC and the DFB laser. The internal
parameters listed in [20] are treated as default, while the
following ve parameters are obtained by tting theoretical
results with experimental measurements for a commercially
available DFB laser. These parameters are the coupling coef-
cient from the laser chip to the SMF, the cavity length, the pho-
ton lifetime, the nonlinear gain coefcient, and the linewidth
enhancement factor.
D. MMF
In a single-mode DFB laser-based transmission link, the
MMF impulse response, optical connectors, and launching
conditions introduce variability in the characteristics of the link.
The measured impulse response of such a transmission link
represents the combined impact of all the above factors [1].
Therefore, measured impulse responses of installed links are
used in this paper to simulate the transmission performance
of AMOOFDM signals. For simplicity, it is also assumed that
the 3-dB effective bandwidth is proportional to the inverse of
transmission distance.
III. SIMULATION PARAMETERS AND AMOOFDM
OPERATING PRINCIPLE
Having developed the comprehensive theoretical model of
the DML-based MMF transmission link, in this section, we
discuss parameters that should be adopted in the following
numerical simulations. In addition, the operating principle of
the AMOOFDM technique will also be illustrated.
A. Simulation Parameters
In the AMOOFDM modems considered here, 64 subcarriers
are used, in which 31 carry real data, one contains no power, and
434 JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 24, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006
Fig. 2. Frequency responses of a 300-m MMF link subject to different launching conditions. Launch Acentral launching; Launch Bsmall offset launching;
and Launch Cconventional offset launching.
the remaining 32 are the complex conjugate of the aforemen-
tioned subcarriers. The modulation formats used on these sub-
carriers vary from DBPSK, DQPSK, and 16QAM to 256QAM,
depending upon the frequency response of a given transmission
link. By adjusting the subcarrier power parameter K
k
, variable
power adaptation on each subcarrier can be achieved. This
manipulation, however, gives little transmission capacity gain,
which agrees with the results presented in [22]. For simplicity,
all the subcarriers are made to have identical powers regardless
of their modulation formats. The cyclic prex parameter
is taken to be 25%. State-of-the-art ADCs are adopted with
7-bit resolution at a sampling rate of r
s
= 12.5 GS/s [23].
The parameters mentioned above give a total symbol length of
6.4 ns, of which 1.6 ns is occupied by the cyclic prex. The
clipping levels in both the transmitter and the receiver are
xed at 13 dB.
The decision on which signal modulation format should be
used on each subcarrier is made via a negotiation between
the transmitter and the receiver according to the frequency
response of the transmission link. Generally speaking, a high
(low) modulation format is used on a subcarrier suffering a low
(high) transmission loss. The total channel bit error rate (BER)
BER
T
is dened as
BER
T
=
1
N
s
1
N
s
1

k=1
BER
k
(14)
where BER
k
is the signal BER corresponding to the kth
subcarrier. A high modulation format is always preferred if
BER
T
remains at 1.0 10
3
or better, which leads to error-free
operation when combined with forward error correction (FEC).
It should be noted that such negotiations take place only in the
initial stage of establishing a connection over an MMF and the
modulation format remains unchanged afterward. Subcarriers
suffering very high losses may be dropped if a large number of
errors still occur on them even when DBPSK is used.
An avalanche photodiode detector is used here, which has
a quantum efciency of 0.8 and a receiver sensitivity of
26 dBm (corresponding to 10 Gb/s nonreturn to zero (NRZ)
with a BER of 1.0 10
9
). Based on these parameters and re-
ceived optical powers, both shot and thermal noises associated
with the detection process can be computed [19].
For simulations of a directly modulated DFB laser at
1550 nm, the following parameters are adopted: a cavity length
l = 300 m; a cavity width w = 2 m; a cavity thickness
d = 0.033 m; a photon lifetime
p
= 3.6 ps; a nonlinear
gain coefcient = 7.4 10
23
m
3
; a rate of refractive-index
change with carrier density of 1.38 10
26
m
3
; and a 38%
coupling efciency from the laser chip to the SMF. Other
parameters that are not mentioned explicitly here are taken from
[20]. An optical attenuator is used to ensure that an optical
power of 0 dBm is coupled into MMF links.
Two measured impulse responses of transmission links using
worst case MMFs with core diameters of 62.5 m are adopted
here [24]. The corresponding frequency responses 300 m in
length at a wavelength of 1300 nm are given in Figs. 2 and 3
subject to different launching conditions. In Fig. 2, 3-dB
effective bandwidths [differential mode delay (DMD) dened
as the time delay between the fastest and slowest excited
modes] are 202.5 MHz km (2.0 ns/km), 241.5 MHz km
(1.3 ns/km), and 318.5 MHz km (0.7 ns/km) for central,
small offset, and conventional offset launching conditions, re-
spectively. In Fig. 3, 3-dB effective bandwidths (DMDs) are
292.5 MHz km (1.2 ns/km) and 553.5 MHz km (0.5 ns/km)
for central and small offset launching conditions, respectively.
A linear ber loss of 1 dB/km is assumed for these two links.
It should be pointed out that the developed theoretical model
for the AMOOFDM modems is applicable to any ber types
and any operating wavelengths. Regarding the bers and the op-
erating wavelength adopted in this paper, it is necessary to make
two issues clear. 1) Here, specic use is made of data for dened
bers [24]. To conrm the viability of the proposed technique
for applications in the vast majority of installed bers, use is
TANG et al.: HIGH-SPEED TRANSMISSION OF ADAPTIVELY MODULATED OPTICAL OFDM SIGNALS 435
Fig. 3. Frequency responses of a 300-m MMF link subject to different launching conditions. Launch Acentral launching and Launch Bsmall offset
launching.
Fig. 4. Example of how AMOOFDM operates in an illustrative MMF link (left). Normalized frequency response of such a link. (Top) Signal modulation formats
used on various subcarriers. (Right) Their corresponding BER.
also made of a set of 1000 statistically constructed impulse
responses with DMDs of 2 ns/km, based on which simula-
tions are undertaken, as discussed in Section IV-A. The worst
performance obtained in all those constructed bers is similar
to the minimum achievable performance for the bers adopted
here. 2) Due to the availability of parameters corresponding
to the DFB laser at a wavelength of 1550 nm, in this paper,
an operating wavelength of 1550 nm is adopted, which, how-
ever, differs from the wavelength utilized in measuring the
impulse responses. Such wavelength difference does not affect
the minimum obtainable transmission capability of the tech-
nique, because in comparison with a light source at a short
wavelength, a light source at a long wavelength excites less
number of optical modes, leading to an impulse response with
a higher effective bandwidth. Therefore, the adoption of an
impulse response measured at 1300 nm for a transmission link
operating at 1550 nm gives more margin in the claimed trans-
mission capacity of the proposed technique.
B. AMOOFDM Operating Principle
An example of how AMOOFDM operates is shown in
Fig. 4, where a normalized frequency response of an illus-
trative 550-m MMF link with a 3-dB effective bandwidth of
180 MHz km subject to conventional offset launching is
plotted together with different modulation formats used on
subcarriers and their corresponding BER. The total signal line
rate is 26 Gb/s, which is dened as the sum of the signal bit
rate corresponding to each subcarrier under the condition that
BER
T
= 1.0 10
3
and is written as
R
signal
=
N
s
1

k=1
r
k
(15)
with r
k
being the signal bit rate corresponding to the kth
subcarrier. The total channel BER of 1.0 10
3
will provide
error-free operation when combined with FEC. To emphasize
436 JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 24, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006
the AMOOFDM operating principle, in plotting Fig. 4, a DAC
with 10-bit resolution at 12.5 GS/s is adopted for reducing
quantization noise. In addition, an ideal intensity modulator
is also considered to ensure that output waveforms are able to
track exactly drive signals.
It can be seen in Fig. 4 that following the frequency response,
the modulation format varies from 256QAM to DBPSK: A
high (low) modulation format is used on a subcarrier suffering
a low (high) transmission loss. No power is contained in the
rst subcarrier. The last subcarrier is located in the deepest
null of the frequency response, a large number of errors occur
even when DBPSK is used. This leads to failure of the entire
transmission system. Therefore, the last subcarrier is dropped,
as shown in Fig. 4. The number of dropped subcarriers in-
creases with increasing transmission distance. Fig. 4 also shows
a large BER variation between different subcarriers; this is the
direct result of the imperfect subcarrier orthogonality induced
by the introduction of the cyclic prex. It can be understood
from Fig. 4 that AMOOFDM has a spectral efciency that
signicantly exceeds limits associated with all traditional signal
modulation and electrical digital signal processing, and that by
negotiations between the transmitter and the receiver, optimized
link performance is always achievable regardless of ber types,
launching conditions, and transmission distances.
IV. DIRECTLY MODULATED DFB LASER EFFECT
AND PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS
Having chosen the simulation parameters and understood
the operating principle of the AMOOFDM technique, in this
section, we will analyze the physical limitations on the achiev-
able transmission capacity of the technique. Attention will
be focused on two issues, namely 1) the optimum choice of
the DFB operating conditions and the nonlinear DFB laser
effect under such conditions and 2) the identication of key
factors limiting the achievable transmission capacity of the
technique. This analysis is crucial in producing a design frame-
work of optimum AMOOFDM modems for possible future
development.
A. Optimum DFB Operating Conditions
The signal line rate as a function of the bias current for
various peak-to-peak drive currents is illustrated in Fig. 5,
where simulations are performed based on a 550-m link using
an MMF with a frequency response given in Fig. 3 subject
to central launching condition. In obtaining Fig. 5, a xed
optical power of 0 dBm is coupled into the MMF link. It can
be seen from Fig. 5 that the signal line rate drops sharply for
bias currents of < 20 mA. This is mainly due to small bias
current-induced overshoots in the optical signal waveform and
increased frequency chirp. These effects are, however, reduced
considerably for bias currents of > 30 mA; over such region,
almost-at lineshapes are observed in Fig. 5. It can also be
seen in Fig. 5 that the signal line rate is almost insensitive to
the variation in drive currents, indicating that the inuence of
DFB-induced frequency chirp on transmission performance is
negligible, which will be discussed in details in Section IV-B.
Fig. 5. Signal line rate as a function of the bias current for various peak-to-
peak drive currents.
In practice, a DFB laser typically operates in a bias current
range of 2060 mA and a peak-to-peak drive current range
of 1030 mA; this produces an output optical power in the
range of 59 dBm. To leave a sufciently large loss margin for
practical link design, here, we choose the operating point to be
a 30-mA bias current with a 15-mA peak-to-peak drive current.
The performance characteristics of the laser are as follows: a
threshold current of 4.2 mA; an output optical power of 6 dBm;
a signal extinction ratio of 2 dB; and an adiabatic frequency
chirp of 5 GHz. As this DFB laser produces an output optical
power of 9 dBm for a bias current of 60 mA, the adopted
operating condition gives an extra loss margin of 3 dB. Apart
from the 3-dB noise margin, another advantage associated with
this operating point is the small adiabatic frequency chirp
imposed on optical signals because of the relatively low peak-
to-peak drive current.
B. Nonlinearity Effects of DFB Lasers Under Adopted
Operating Conditions
To investigate the nonlinear effect of the DFB laser, a com-
parison of the normalized waveforms is made in Fig. 6 between
cases of including the DFB under the adopted operating con-
ditions and an ideal intensity modulator. The waveforms are
the outputs of the ADCs in the receiver after transmission of
a 550-m MMF having a frequency response given in Fig. 3
subject to central launching condition. The comparison of the
corresponding received spectra is also shown in Fig. 7. It can
be found in Fig. 6 that the waveform associated with the DFB
laser is able to track that associated with the ideal intensity
modulator, except that slight waveform distortions occur in the
peaks of the DFB-related waveform. Such distortions will lift
up the high-frequency edge of the received frequency response,
as shown in Fig. 7.
It can be understood from Figs. 6 and 7 that the DFB laser-
induced nonlinearities under the adopted operating conditions
do not affect signicantly the transmission performance. This
is veried in Fig. 8, where a negligible difference in the signal
line rate for transmission distances less than 2000 m is observed
between cases of including the DFB laser and the ideal intensity
TANG et al.: HIGH-SPEED TRANSMISSION OF ADAPTIVELY MODULATED OPTICAL OFDM SIGNALS 437
Fig. 6. Comparison of the normalized waveforms between cases of including
a DFB laser under the adopted operating condition and an ideal intensity
modulator.
Fig. 7. Comparison of the normalized spectrum between cases of including
a DFB laser under the adopted operating condition and an ideal intensity
modulator.
modulator. In computing Fig. 8, the same MMF characteristics
as used in Figs. 6 and 7 are considered. It should be stressed
that the DFB-induced adiabatic frequency chirp is important
in determining the performance of SMF links over a relatively
long transmission distance [25], which is, however, beyond the
scope of this paper.
C. Key Factors Limiting the Maximum
Achievable Performance
Through extensive simulations of transmission performance
over a wide range of link parameters, it is found that the ADC
quantization of bits and the cyclic prex are the key factors
that strongly limit the maximum achievable performance of the
proposed technique. Their importance under different condi-
tions can be seen in Figs. 9 and 10. In obtaining these two
gures, MMF characteristics similar to those in Fig. 8 are
considered except that different transmission distances of 550
and 1950 m are used in Figs. 9 and 10, respectively. Fiber
DMDs are 0.65 and 2.3 ns for the short and long transmission
Fig. 8. Comparison of the capacity versus reach performance between
cases of including the DFB laser under the adopted operating condition and
an ideal intensity modulator. The same MMF characteristics as those used in
Figs. 6 and 7 are considered in simulating this gure.
Fig. 9. Total channel BER as a function of the optical power launched into a
550-m MMF link is illustrated to show the effects of ADC bits of quantization
and the cyclic prex.
Fig. 10. Total channel BER as a function of the optical power launched into a
1950-m MMF link is illustrated to show the effects of ADC bits of quantization
and the cyclic prex.
links, respectively. From the discussions in Section IV-A, it
can be seen that the launched optical power is adjustable in a
range from 30 to 10 dBm. The modulation format on each
subcarrier is chosen at a launched optical power of 0 dBm, and
such modulation format remains unchanged during the entire
launched optical power variation range. The signal line rates of
24.4 and 9.7 Gb/s correspond to Figs. 9 and 10, respectively. As
listed in Section III, the cyclic prex is 1.6 ns in both gures.
438 JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 24, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006
To effectively eliminate quantization and clipping noise,
when a signal modulation format is increased to near its
highest level, the minimum increases in the quantization level
and the clipping level should be about 1 bit and 2 dB, re-
spectively. A minimum quantization of 10 and a minimum
clipping level of 13 dB are required for 256QAM. However,
state-of-the-art ADCs considered in this paper only have 7-bit
resolution. Therefore, transmission performance is affected by
quantization noise. Furthermore, with increasing transmission
distance, the high-loss-frequency-response region outside the
signal bandwidth will be squeezed into the signal spectral
region ( 6.25 GHz), thus, requiring low modulation format
levels to be used on more subcarriers, leading to a transmission-
distance-dependent modulation format level. As a direct result
of this effect, quantization noise is high for short transmission
links, and vice versa. On the contrary, the inuence of the
clipping level on transmission performance is marginal because
of the adoption of the 13-dB clipping level, which is a practi-
cally achievable minimum value required by 256QAM.
It can be seen in Fig. 9 that for short transmission distances
with DMDs being less than the cyclic prex, the limited
quantization of ADCs is the most important factor that has the
dominant impact on the maximum achievable transmission per-
formance. For such case, the cyclic prex is sufciently long to
compensate modal dispersion, but the modulation formats on all
subcarriers are too high (> 32QAM) to achieve quantization-
noise-free operation. On the other hand, for long transmission
distances with DMDs being greater than the cyclic prex, the
modulation formats on all subcarriers are so low (< 32QAM)
that quantization-noise-free operation is achievable, but the
cyclic prex is too short to compensate modal dispersion.
Therefore, the cyclic prex is the most important factor, as
shown in Fig. 10.
The other salient feature illustrated in both Figs. 9 and 10
is a very large loss margin of about 15 dB in Fig. 9 for a
typical launched optical power of 0 dBm. This implies that
the same modulation formats may be taken on subcarriers
suffering losses within that margin. This is consistent with
Fig. 4, where four out of ve subcarriers located near zero
frequency are modulated using 128QAM and similar BER
occurs on them; even the loss falls at about 15 dB below the
zero-frequency point. The loss margin in Fig. 10 is even greater
than that in Fig. 9, because the corresponding signal line rate
is low.
V. CAPACITY VERSUS REACH PERFORMANCE
Having analyzed the inuence of key factors on the trans-
mission performance of the AMOOFDM signals, attention will
now be focused on investigating the practically achievable
transmission performance of the AMOOFDM signals in worst
case ber links. It should be noted that the simulations are
based on parameters associated with commercially available
components.
Simulations of capacity versus reach performance are under-
taken based on two installed worst case MMFs [24], whose
frequency responses subject to different launch conditions are
shown in Figs. 2 and 3. For simplicity, we refer to the link
Fig. 11. Transmission capacity versus reach performance in a link using
ber 1 under different launching conditions.
Fig. 12. Transmission capacity versus reach performance in a link using
ber 2 under different launching conditions.
corresponding to Fig. 2 as ber 1, and the link corresponding
to Fig. 3 as ber 2.
The transmission capacity versus reach performance of the
IMDD AMOOFDM signals is shown in Figs. 11 and 12 for
unamplied DFB-based links using ber 1 and ber 2, re-
spectively. The 3-dB effective bandwidth and the frequency
response are signicantly dependent upon ber types and
launching conditions, as shown in Figs. 2 and 3; similar ca-
pacity versus reach performance is, however, still observed
in Figs. 11 and 12. For transmission distances of < 50 m, a
maximum signal line rate of about 40 Gb/s occurs regardless
of transmission distance, ber type, and launch condition. This
arises from the limited quantization bits of the ADCs and the
compensated modal dispersion effect by the cyclic prex. For
long transmission distances with DMDs smaller than the cyclic
prex, the cyclic prex is still capable of compensating for
modal dispersion, thus, leading to almost the independence
of the signal line rate on launching conditions, as seen in
Fig. 12. In comparison with Fig. 12, the signal line rate variation
(<30%) between different launching conditions in Fig. 11 is
larger, because the difference of the corresponding frequency
responses in the signal spectral region is greater than the
maximum loss margin of 15 dB. For even long transmission
distances with DMDs larger than the cyclic prex, the signal
TANG et al.: HIGH-SPEED TRANSMISSION OF ADAPTIVELY MODULATED OPTICAL OFDM SIGNALS 439
line rate drops with increasing transmission distance due to the
modal dispersion-induced ISI effect.
It can also be seen in Figs. 11 and 12 that AMOOFDM can
support about 28 Gb/s over 300 m and 10 Gb/s over 900 m
transmission in MMF links with 3-dB effective bandwidths as
small as 200 MHz km. As discussed in Section VI-A, 30 Gb/s
IMDD AMOOFDM signal transmission over 300 m is also
achievable in >90%statistically constructed impulse responses
with a DMD of 2 ns/km. The robustness of the signals to ber
types originates from the introduction of the cyclic prex, the
efcient utilization of the MMF frequency response by using
adaptive modulation format, and the large noise margin.
It should be noted that the simulations undertaken in this
paper are based on the assumption that FEC is used to elim-
inate the errors that occurred during signal transmission. The
capacity versus reach performance reported here is far beyond
the performance achieved in FEC-free transmission links using
other signal modulation schemes [5][7], [11][13] and elec-
trical equalization in the receiver [8][10]. Even if the novel
third-generation FEC based on block turbo code is adopted in
these systems, a 9.4-dB loss margin can be achieved for a signal
capacity of 10 Gb/s [26]. This loss margin is, however, at least
5.6 dB smaller than that offered by the AMOOFDM technique.
This implies that the introduction of FEC into MMF links using
other modulation formats or electrical signal processing can
improve the transmission performance; the improved transmis-
sion performance is, however, still far below the transmission
performance achieved by using the proposed technique.
VI. VIABILITY FOR APPLICATIONS IN
INSTALLED MMF LINKS
In this section, the viability of the proposed AMOOFDM
technique is discussed for practical applications in the vast
majority of installed MMF links.
A. Viability for Application in the Vast Majority of
Installed MMF Links
It is well known that there exists enormous variability of
ber characteristics in terms of both the 3-dB effective band-
width and the baseband frequency response. In particular, as
mentioned in Section I, such variability is more signicant
for installed MMFs due to variations in the refractive-index
prole between different bers. However, there still exist some
common features among all those bers. It was shown [13] that,
unlike in an SMF, the frequency response of an MMF does not
decay steadily after the 3-dB point, which denes the baseband
bandwidth of the ber. Instead, there are large regions of
relatively at response at about 10 dB below the zero-frequency
point for frequencies beyond the baseband bandwidth, referred
to as passband regions. The baseband region is dominated by
the low-order guided modes having large time delays between
each other. The frequency response in the baseband region,
therefore, varies signicantly with ber types and launching
conditions. While the passband region is dominated by the
high-order guided modes having small time delays between
each other. Therefore, the frequency response in the passband
region does not vary with ber types and launching conditions
as signicant as that in the baseband regions.
The frequency response is a direct result of the number of
excited modes having different powers and time delays [1].
As one of the unique advantages, the proposed AMOOFDM
technique is able to combat such modal dispersion. From the
discussions in Section II-B, it can be understood that, in prin-
ciple, AMOOFDM can be made robust to any arbitrary modal
dispersion if the cyclic prex is chosen to be sufciently long,
i.e., T
P
> T
DMD
, here, T
DMD
is the DMD of the ber. Fur-
thermore, the utilization of adaptive signal modulation formats
also introduces a 7.510-dB improvement in the signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) [22]. This is the physical explanation of the origin
of the >15-dB loss margin, as observed in Figs. 9 and 10. The-
oretically speaking, the proposed technique is a viable solution
for overcoming the bandwidth restrictions in any MMFs.
The great tolerance to various frequency responses is an-
other unique feature of the technique. Under the condition of
a practically acceptable cyclic prex parameter of = 25%,
the capability of combating modal dispersion of the proposed
technique is examined by using statistical analyses. It is known
that [27] the impulse response of an MMF with M guided
modes can be treated as the combination of M delta functions
corresponding to independent random time delays. The time
delays are uniformly distributed with respect to the average
transmission time delay with the maximum time deviation of
T
DMD
/2. By using T
DMD
= 2 ns/km (which corresponds to the
worst case 5% of bers that are likely to be installed [28]) and
M = 100, the frequency responses are obtained by following
the same procedure as that presented in [27]. Using the com-
puted frequency responses = 25% and practically available
AMOOFDM modem parameters (given in Section III), simu-
lations are undertaken for over 1000 frequency responses. It is
shown that > 30 Gb/s IMDD AMOOFDM signal transmission
over 300 m is achievable in > 90% statistically constructed
MMF links. This indicates that AMOOFDM is indeed feasible
for the vast majority of installed bers even under practically
adopted AMOOFDM parameters. It should be noted that the
main emphasis of this work is on the demonstration of the
operating principle of the proposed technique and the inuence
of key components involved in the modems on the transmission
performance; detailed statistical analyses are, therefore, not
reported here.
The aforementioned transmission performance is further ver-
ied by the simulations undertaken in Sections IV and V, where
use is made of two installed worst case bers subject to various
launching conditions. Once again, numerical simulations are
based on practically available parameters. As discussed in
Section III-A, no attempt is made to select a particular ber
and/or to optimize a frequency response region. Furthermore,
to leave a sufcient margin, the lowest transmission capacity
among all the bers and all the launching conditions is claimed
in this paper as the obtainable performance of the proposed
technique.
It should be pointed that, apart from applications in MMF
transmission links, AMOOFDM is also promising for applica-
tions in SMF-based links for local area network (LAN) and
metropolitan area network (MAN). Simulations have shown
440 JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 24, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006
that 30 Gb/s IMDD AMOOFDM signal transmission over a
40-km non-dispersion-shifted ber (NDSF) can be achieved
in a DFB-based link without using optical amplication and
dispersion compensation. While conventional modulation tech-
niques are able to support just 40 Gb/s signal transmission over
< 2 km under the same operating conditions [29]. Detailed
results will be reported elsewhere.
B. Connector Offset and Environmental Effects
Another challenge in designing a robust transmission link
is to ensure that the transmission performance is insensitive
to component perturbations and extreme environmental con-
ditions. Due to the mechanical tolerance in manufacturing
connectors and bers, connector offset may bring about several
decibels of optical power penalty in a transmission link using
conventional modulation techniques [30]; it is worth discussing
the impact of this effect on the transmission performance of
AMOOFDM signals.
First, connector offset causes optical power attenuation,
which is, however, relatively low for restricted launching con-
ditions of our current interest [30]. Second, connector offset
also causes mode coupling, which alters the frequency response
of the transmission link through redistributing optical powers
among different excited modes. The AMOOFDM technique
makes full use of the frequency response region occupied
by the AMOOFDM signals through negotiations between the
transmitter and receiver: High (low) modulation formats are
chosen on subcarriers suffering low (high) losses. In compar-
ison with the frequency response region occupied by the signal,
the frequency response region beyond the signal bandwidth
contains much less optical power due to the decay of the fre-
quency response. The mode coupling-induced redistribution of
optical powers causes a corresponding redistribution of signal
modulation formats among different subcarriers. From (15),
it can be seen that the total signal line rate almost remains
constant. It is, therefore, expected that the connector offset-
induced mode coupling effect is very small.
Third, connector offset also introduces mode selective loss
(MSL), which leads to modal noise. However, it is expected that
the MSL-induced modal noise effect is very small. This is due
to three reasons, namely 1) all the transmitted light at the output
end of the transmission link is coupled into the photodiode; 2)
no mode ltering components are involved in the transmission
link, MSL is relatively low for restricted launching conditions,
and output characteristics of single-mode DFB lasers is very
stable; 3) transmission distances of hundreds of meters of
current interest are longer than those that lead to strong coherent
interaction between different modes [31].
Environmental effects including the thermal and mechani-
cal variations in both the ber and the laser also affect the
transmission performance, as they introduce mode coupling
and modal noise. The output characteristics of the single-mode
DFB laser is very stable because of the mature of the manu-
facturing technique. As already discussed above, the impact of
mode coupling and modal noise is small. More importantly, as
demonstrated in Figs. 9 and 10, there is about 15 dB of power
budget, which may be sufciently large to compensate for a
few decibels of optical power penalties induced by unexpected
extreme environmental conditions. Thus, it is expected that
the transmission performance is robust to the environmental
effects.
VII. CONCLUSION
A novel optical signal modulation concept of AMOOFDM
has been proposed, and a comprehensive theoretical model
of the AMOOFDM modems has been developed. Numeri-
cal simulations of the transmission performance of IMDD
AMOOFDM signals have been undertaken in unamplied
worst case MMF links using DFBs. It has been shown that, in
comparison with all existing schemes, AMOOFDM supports a
higher transmission capacity, has a greater spectral efciency,
and is less susceptible to different launching conditions, modal
dispersion, and ber types. It has been shown that 28 Gb/s
over 300 m and 10 Gb/s over 900 m transmission of IMDD
AMOOFDMsignals is feasible in unamplied DFB-based links
using MMFs having 3-dB effective bandwidths as small as
200 MHz km.
It has also been shown that the resolution of the adopted
ADCs limits the maximum achievable capacity versus reach
performance for MMF links having DMDs less than the cyclic
prex; while the cyclic prex is the main limiting factor for
MMF links with DMDs larger than the cyclic prex. On the
other hand, the effect of DFB lasers under the operating con-
ditions adopted here is negligible regardless of transmission
distances, launching conditions, and ber types. A very large
noise margin of 15 dB has also been observed, which would be
very useful for practical link design and deployment.
The work reported in this paper indicates that AMOOFDM
is a promising technique for providing a cost-effective high-
speed solution with excellent exibility and robustness for
upgrading installed MMF-based 1 Gb/s Ethernet backbones to
10 Gb/s and above. Simulations also suggest that the use of
3-dB ber effective bandwidth is not appropriate for describ-
ing the transmission performance of AMOOFDM signals in
MMF links, instead use may be made of a 15-dB bandwidth
denition.
As the length of the cyclic prex can be chosen by design
then, in principle, AMOOFDM can be made robust to any arbi-
trary modal dispersion with the compromise of the bandwidth
of transmission links. To solve this problem, an adaptive cyclic
prex may be adopted, where the cyclic prex is adjusted for
a given link to be just sufcient for compensating for modal
dispersion. Clearly, both the capacity versus reach performance
and the exibility can be improved by the adaptive cyclic prex.
Such investigations are currently underway, and results will be
reported in due course.
REFERENCES
[1] P. Pepeljugoski, S. E. Golowich, A. J. Ritger, P. Kolesar, and A. Risteski,
Modelling and simulation of next-generation multimode bre links,
J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 12421255, May 2003.
[2] B. Tolley, J. Bisberg, C. Bryson, and J. Jaeger. (2003, Nov.). 10 Gb/s
ethernet on FDDI-grade MM bre, IEEE 802.3 10 Gb/s on FDDI-Grade
MM Fiber Study Group. [Online]. Available: http://grouper.ieee.org/
groups/802/3/10GMMFSG/index.html
TANG et al.: HIGH-SPEED TRANSMISSION OF ADAPTIVELY MODULATED OPTICAL OFDM SIGNALS 441
[3] L. Aronson and L. Buckman. (2004, Apr.). Guide to HP labs ROFL/OFL
ber measurements from 12/15/9712/19/97, IEEE 802.3 10 GbE Study
Group. [Online]. Available: www.ieee802.org/3/z/mbi/index/html
[4] L. Raddatz, I. H. White, D. G. Cunningham, and M. C. Nowell, An
experimental and theoretical study of the offset launch technique for
the enhancement of the bandwidth of multimode bre links, J. Lightw.
Technol., vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 324331, Mar. 1998.
[5] L. A. Buckman, B. E. Lemoff, A. J. Schmit, R. P. Tella, and W. Gong,
Demonstration of a small-form-factor WWDM transceiver module for
10-Gb/s local area networks, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 14, no. 5,
pp. 702704, May 2002.
[6] M. Webster, E. J. Tyler, A. Wonfor, R. V. Penty, and I. H. White, Novel
cascaded optical coding schemes for bandwidth efcient systems applica-
tions, in Proc. Optical Fibre Communication Conf. and Exhibit (OFC),
Anaheim, CA, 2001, vol. 3, pp. WDD47-1WDD47-3.
[7] K. M. Patel and S. E. Ralph, Enhanced multimode bre link performance
using a spatially resolved receiver, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 14,
no. 3, pp. 393395, Mar. 2002.
[8] S. Bhoja. (2004, Mar.). EDC coverage results on the Cambridge MMF
model, IEEE 802.3 10 Gb/s on FDDI-Grade MM Fiber Study Group.
[Online]. Available: http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/3/10GMMFSG/
index.html
[9] J. D. Ingham, R. V. Penty, I. H. White, and D. G. Cunningham,
Electronic equalisation for length extension of 2 to 3 in 10 Gb/s
multimode-bre data communication links, Electron. Lett., vol. 40,
no. 22, pp. 14371439, Oct. 2004.
[10] C. Xia, M. Ajgaonkar, and W. Rosenkranz, On the performance of the
electrical equalization technique in MMF links for 10-gigabit ethernet,
J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 20012011, Jun. 2005.
[11] S. S.-H. Yam, F.-T. An, S. Sinha, M. E. Marhic, and L. G. Kazovsky,
40 Gb/s transmission over 140 m 62.5 m multimode bre using
polarization controlled launch, presented at the Conf. Lasers and Electro-
Optics (CLEO), vol. 1, San Francisco, CA, 2004, Paper CTuEE5.
[12] E. J. Tyler, M. Webster, R. V. Penty, I. H. White, S. Yu, and J.
Rorison, Subcarrier modulated transmission of 2.5 Gb/s over 300 m of
62.5-m-core diameter multimode bre, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett.,
vol. 14, no. 12, pp. 17431745, Dec. 2002.
[13] E. J. Tyler, P. Kourtessis, M. Webster, E. Rochart, T. Quinlan, S. E. M.
Dudley, S. D. Walker, R. V. Penty, and I. H. White, Toward terabit-
per-second capacities over multimode bre links using SCM/WDM tech-
niques, J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 21, no. 12, pp. 32373243, Dec. 2003.
[14] J. Heiskala and J. Terry, OFDM Wireless LANs: A Theoretical and
Practical Guide. Indianapolis, IN: Sams, 2002.
[15] N. E. Jolley, H. Kee, R. Rickard, J. Tang, and K. Cordina, Generation
and propagation of a 1550 nm 10 Gb/s optical orthogonal frequency
division multiplexed signal over 1000 m of multimode bre using a di-
rectly modulated DFB, presented at the Optical Fibre Communication
Conf./National Fiber Optic Engineers Conf. (OFC/NFOEC), Anaheim,
CA, Mar. 11, 2005, Paper OFP3.
[16] C. Liu and F. Li, Spectrum modelling of OFDM signals for WLAN,
IEE Electron. Lett., vol. 40, no. 22, pp. 14311432, Oct. 2004.
[17] A. B. Carlson, Communication Systems: An Introduction to Signals and
Noise in Electrical Communication, 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill,
1986.
[18] D. F. Elliott and K. R. Rao, Fast Transforms: Algorithms, Analyses,
Applications. New York: Academic, 1982.
[19] G. P. Agrawal, Fibre-Optic Communication Systems, 2nd ed. New York:
Wiley, 1997.
[20] J. E. A. Whiteaway, G. H. B. Thompson, A. J. Collar, and C. J. Armistead,
The design and assessment of /4 phase-shifted DFB laser structures,
IEEE J. Quantum Electron., vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 12611279, Jun. 1989.
[21] J. M. Tang and K. A. Shore, Strong picosecond optical pulse propagation
in semiconductor optical ampliers at transparency, IEEE J. Quantum
Electron., vol. 34, no. 7, pp. 12631269, Jul. 1998.
[22] X. She, Z. Zhang, S. Zhou, and Y. Yao, Adaptive turbo coded modulation
for OFDM transmissions, in Proc. Int. Conf. Communication Technology
(ICCT), Beijing, China, 2003, pp. 14911495.
[23] R. H. Walden, Performance trends for analog-to-digital converters,
IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 96101, Feb. 1999.
[24] I. H. White, Private communication, Apr. 2004.
[25] K. Sato, S. Kuwahara, A. Hirano, M. Yoneyama, and Y. Miyamoto,
4 40 Gb/s dense WDM transmission over 40-km SMF using
directly modulated DFB lasers, in Proc. Eur. Conf. Optical Communi-
cation (ECOC), Stockholm, Sweden, 2004, pp. 332333.
[26] T. Mizuochi, Y. Miyata, T. Kobayashi, K. Ouchi, K. Kuno, K. Kubo,
K. Shimizu, H. Tagami, H. Yoshida, H. Fujita, M. Akita, and
K. Motoshima, Forward error correction based on block turbo code
with 3-bit soft decision for 10-Gb/s optical communication systems,
IEEE J. Sel. Topics Quantum Electron., vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 376386,
Mar./Apr. 2004.
[27] S. Kanprachar and I. Jacobs, Diversity coding for subcarrier multi-
plexing on multimode bres, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 51, no. 9,
pp. 15461553, Sep. 2003.
[28] M. Webster, L. Raddatz, I. H. White, and D. G. Cunningham, Astatistical
analysis of conditioned launch for gigabit Ethernet links using multimode
bre, J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 17, no. 9, pp. 15321541, Sep. 1999.
[29] K. Sato, S. Kuwahara, and Y. Miyamoto, Direct modulation of a
distributed feedback laser for 40-Gbit/s very-short-reach optical links, in
Proc. Optical Fibre Communication Conf. (OFC), Anaheim, CA, 2002,
pp. 416417.
[30] P. Hallemeier. (2004, Mar.). Optically mode ltered PHY testing for
300 m FDDI ber transmission, IEEE 802.3 10 Gb/s on FDDI-Grade
MM Fiber Study Group. [Online]. Available: http://grouper.ieee.org/
groups/802/3/10GMMFSG/index.html
[31] G. C. Papen and G. M. Murphy, Modal noise in multimode bres
under restricted launch conditions, J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 17, no. 5,
pp. 817822, May 1999.
J. M. Tang received the Ph.D. degree in optoelectronics from the University
of Wales, Bangor, U.K., in 1999. His Ph.D. dissertation research in nonlinear
dynamical and spectral effects in semiconductor laser devices was completed
within two and a half years, the minimum time allowed by the regulations of
the university.
Immediately after obtaining the Ph.D. degree, he joined the University of
Wales, Bangor as a postdoctoral researcher working on picosecond optical
switching and ultrafast nonlinearities of semiconductor optical devices. His four
years of research in Bangor (19962000) have generated 73 papers published in
refereed professional journals and national and international conferences. From
2000 to 2004, he joined Nortel Networks, Harlow, U.K., as a Research Engineer
conducting research on next-generation high-capacity optical communication
systems. His research activities have covered a broad range of areas including,
for example, advanced transmission system design for Ethernet, metro, and
long-haul transmission links and development of various optical ampliers and
optical transceivers using optical and electrical signal processing. In 2005, he
joined the University of Wales, Bangor, as a Lecturer. His current research
interests include ultrafast nonlinearities of semiconductor optical devices, high-
speed optical communication systems, and optical networking.
P. M. Lane, photograph and biography not available at the time of publication.
K. Alan Shore (M88SM95) received the honor degree in mathematics from
the University of Oxford, Oxford, U.K., and the Ph.D. degree in semiconductor
lasers from University College, Cardiff, Wales, U.K. His thesis work was
concerned with the electrical and optical properties of double-heterostructure
semiconductor lasers.
He was a Lecturer at the University of Liverpool (19791983) and then at the
University of Bath, where he became Senior Lecturer (1986), Reader (1990),
and Professor (1995). In 1995, he was appointed to the Chair of Electronic
Engineering, University of Wales, Bangor, U.K., where he is currently the
Head of the School of Informatics. He is the Director of Industrial and
Commercial Optoelectronics (ICON), a Welsh Development Agency Centre
of Excellence that has a mission to make light work through the utilization
of Bangor optoelectronics expertise and facilities. He is also the Chair of the
Welsh Optoelectronics Forum. Between 2002 and 2005, he served as the Chair
of the Institute of Physics in Wales. He has been a Visiting Researcher at
laboratories in Australia, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, and the U.S.
He has authored or coauthored over 700 contributions to archival journals,
books, and technical conferences. His research work has been principally
in the area of semiconductor optoelectronic device design and experimental
characterization with particular emphasis on nonlinearities in laser diodes
and semiconductor optical waveguides. His current research interests include
multiwave mixing and optical switching in semiconductor lasers, design and
fabrication of intersubband semiconductor lasers and organic semiconductor
lasers, dynamics of vertical cavity semiconductor lasers, and applications of
nonlinear dynamics in semiconductor lasers to optical data encryption.
Dr. Shore is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and of the
Institute of Physics.