Proceedings of IEEE IC-BNMT2013

SIMULATION AND STUDY FOR

COHERENT OFDM SYSTEM
Yi LIU
Department of Electronic Information Engineering, Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University,
Guangzhou 510000, P. R. China
798451810@qq.com
Abstract: The CO-OFDM (coherent optical orthogonal
frequency division multiplexing) system is simulated
and studied in the paper. The electro-optic modulation
and photoelectric detection in CO-OFDM are studied.
The performance of CO-OFDM system with different
modulation mode and different number of sub-carrier
are studied. The result of simulation shows that
performance depends on the modulation mode, coupling
optical power, attention of atmosphere, the number of
the subcarrier and OSNR. The result of simulation also
show that the CO-OFDM system will has good
anti-dispersion ability and higher bandwidth efficiency if
using the suitable modulation and coupled combined
optical power.

parallel conversion. So that, each sub-carrier modulated

data cycle for the raw data is expanded to N times the
symbol period. In order to improve the transmission
efficiency, the parallel binary data is modulated. The
method of modulation can be quadrature amplitude
modulation (M-QAM) modulation or quadrature phase
shift keying (QPSK) modulation. The modulated signal
is added a guard interval (GI) after inverse Fourier
transform (IFFT). The bits can be allocated to each
sub-carrier and mapped to the amplitude and phase of
the subcarriers through IFFT transform. Using the
electro-optical conversion module, the RF domain signal
is converted into an optical signal to be transmitted.
serial / parallel

Keywords: Optical communication; CO-OFDM;

Electro-optic modulation; Photo electric detection

parallel / serial

Bits

Bits
QAM

QAM modulator

modulator

1 Introduction
DeGI/ IFFT

IFFT/GI

The orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)

technology used in optical communications, can
construct a high-speed, large capacity, low-cost optical
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (Optical
OFDM, O-OFDM) transmission system. There are two
optical detecting means of O-OFDM, the direct
detection optical OFDM (DDO-OFDM) and the
coherent detection optical OFDM (CO-OFDM). In 2006,
W. Shieh et al proposed the CO-OFDM technology can
be used to suppress the optical system of the impact of
the dispersion effect, and successfully transmit
CO-OFDM 10Gb/s signal through a standard
single-mode fiber which is 1000km long Ref. [1]. Then,
the study on CO-OFDM system deeper also has been
expanded Ref. [2-4]. Wang B. Du and Arthur J. Lowery
studied the long-range transport of CO-OFDM systems
Ref. [5].

Electricity Electricity
Amplifier Amplifier

Low Pass Filter

LD1

PIN2

PIN1

PIN2

SSMF

PIN1

MZ
MZ
modulator modulator
90e
SSMF
Optical
Amplifier

LD2
Optical
filter

Figure 1 Architecture of CO-OFDM system

2 The principles of CO-OFDM system

In order to enhance the quality of the signal and extend

the transmission distance in the process, it is necessary
that there are the introduction of optical amplifiers and
optical filters in the CO-OFDM system.

2.1 System architecture

CO-OFDM system mainly includes five parts, RF
transmitter,
electro-optical
modulation
module,
single-mode fiber channel, optical detection module and
RF receiver. The basic CO-OFDM system architecture is
shown in Figure 1. The basic working principle of
CO-OFDM system is as follows: the original binary bit
stream is mapped to N parallel subchannels by a serial /

2.2

Principle of OFDM

Sequence can be divided into finite-length sequence and

arbitrary-length sequence. An arbitrarily long sequence
can be expressed by expression x(k ) and the length of

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257

Proceedings of IEEE IC-BNMT2013

k is infinite. When x (k )  x(k ) , you can call this

In order to generate a complex baseband OFDM signal,

the 2N complex data is direct selected for modulating
2N subcarriers (for 2N point IFFT). The total bandwidth
remains 2N sub-band width, but the amount of
information returned 2N an amount of information
carried by a plurality of data. The real part of the final
carrier is transmitted by using cosine-carrier, and the
imaginary part transmitted by using sine-carrier. OFDM
signal generated by the Matlab program is inputted to
optisystem through the interface between the Matlab and
optisystem.

sequence is conjugate symmetric sequence, and denote it

by xe (k ) . When x (k )   x(k ) , you can call this
sequence is conjugate antisymmetric sequence, and
denote it by xo (k ) . And an arbitrary sequence x(k ) can
be expressed as x(k )  xe (k )  xo (k ) . The length of the
sequence that will be OFDM modulated is limitedso it
can be generally expressed as x(k ) k  0,1,2,3...N  1 .
When the sequence satisfies x(k )  x ( N  k )
k  0,1,2,3...N  1 , it can be called the sequence
of conjugate symmetric sequence, denoted as xep (k ) .

2.3 Architecture of transmitter and receiver

The electro-optic modulation of CO-OFDM system,
convert the RF signal to the optical signal, by the use of
optical I/Q modulator. As shown in Figure 2, optical I/Q
modulator consist of Mach-Zehnder modulator which
has one pair of parallel arms. Electrical signal is divided
into two ways, then, transmit respectively into I and Q
ports of the optical I/Q modulator.

Through the definition of DFT, the DFT of the sequence

x(k ) k  0,1,2,3...N  1 whose length is finite, can be
expressed as Eq. (1)
N 1

X (m)   [ x(k )]e

2mk
N

(1)

m  0,1,2,!, N  1

k 0

The formula is decomposed into two parts as Eq. (2).

N

X (m)  [ x(k )]e

2mk
N

k 0

N 1

[ x(k )]e

2mk
N

(2)

k  N 1
2

The second variable items in the part two can be

converted using t  N  n then we can get the new
formula as in Eq. (3).
N

X (m)   [ x(k )]e

2mk
N

[ x( N  t )]e

  [ x(k )]e

2mk
j
N

k 0

X (m)   [ x(k )]e

  [ x(k )]e

(3)
2m ( N k )
j
N

[ x( N  k )]e

Figure 2 The architecture of transmitter

In the simulation system, the CO-OFDM optical signals

are converted into electrical signals by using balanced
dual detector heterodyne detection. Balanced dual
detector is constituted by two pairs of PIN photo
detector. In order to detect the inphase component and
quadrature component of CO-OFDM signal, the phase
of local oscillation optical signal that inputted to the dual
detector is 90 different.

k 1

2mk
N

 (e

2mk
j

N

N 1
2

[ x( N  k )]e

k 0
N

N 1
2

2m ( N  k )
j
N

x( N  k )  x (k ), e
N

2m ( N t )
N

k  N 1
2

k 0
N

2m ( N k )
N

(5)

k 1

2mk
j
N

N 1
2

[ x(k ) ](e

k 0

(4)

2mk
j

N

k 1

The complex representation into real and imaginary

parts of the form
x(k )  xre (k )  jx im (k ), e

2mk
N

 cos[

2mk
2mk
]  j sin[
]
N
N

And the above equation was substituted into Eq. (6)

N

X (m)   [ x(k )]e

k 0

2mk
N

N 1
2

 [ x(k )

](e

2mk
N

)

(6)

k 1

N 1
2

 x(0)  x( N )e jm  2   x(k ) e
2
k 1 
 xre (0)  xre ( N ) cos(m )
2

2 mk
N

 x ( k )  (e

2mk
j
N

) 

N 1

2
2mk
2mk

)  xim (k ) sin(
)
 2   xre (k ) cos(
N
N 
k 1 

Figure 3 Architecture of receiver

258

Proceedings of IEEE IC-BNMT2013

In the simulation system, the photoelectric detection

module is shown in Figure 3. In this figure, the
device-specific parameters are as follows: the laser
parameters and the electro-optic modulator modules, the
phase offset is the offset angle of 90, PIN photo
detector in the dark current of 10nA, sensitivity of 1A /
W.













GEP

GEP

%(5

(

(

In the simulation, the rate of system is 100 GB/s. The

selected optical fiber is a standard single-mode fiber
with the loss of 0.2dB/km, group rate dispersion values
16.75ps / (nmkm), third-order dispersion coefficient
0.075ps / (nm2km). The nonlinear effects, polarization
mode dispersion, the noise of amplifier and filter and
other negative factors are also taken into account.

(

'LVWDQFH.P

Figure 5 The result with 16-QAM modulation

The reason is because that nonlinear optical device

affection that caused by the larger optical power. When
the transmission distance is long, the optical signal
power is reduced because of the insertion loss of the
device. So in this case, the performance is better when
the coupling optical power is larger.

3.1 System performance with different optical

power
When CO-OFDM signal light is transmitted through
single-mode fiber, due to the dispersion and channel
noise, the transmission distance will be limited. The
relationship between the bit error rate and transmission
distance in the case of different coupling optical power
is shown in Figures 4~5. In the simulation, the FFT
points is 1024, the number of subcarriers is set to
512.The data in the figures is obtained in the case that
there is not any dispersion compensation in the
CO-OFDM system.

3.2 System performance

modulation modes

with

different

In COOFDM system, in order to improve the system

throughput, the input signal is a binary-ary modulation.
The digital modulation generally applied in OFDM of
optical fiber communication systems is (QPSK) [6],
4QAM [7], 8QAM [8], 16QAM [9], 32QAM [10],
64QAM [11].

Figure 4 shows the result when 16-PSK modulation

mode is selected and Figure 5 shows the result when
16-QAM modulation mode is selected. As can be seen
from the figures, in the case of the same coupled optical
power, the bit error rate increased as the transmission
distance is increased, due to various noise effects. As
also shown in the figures, the coupled optical power has
a certain impact on the performance of the system. In the
case that transmission distance is short and the coupled
optical power is smaller, the performance is better.

In the simulation, the FFT point is 512, the number of

subcarriers is set to 256, the coupled optical power is set
to 4dBm.The result of simulation is shown in figure 6
and Figure 7. Figure 6 shows the difference between
16QAM and 16PSK modulation mode. As shown in the
figure, the BER of 16PSK is higher than the BER of
16QAM in the same case of distance.


       













(

(

GEP



GEP

System performance analysis

GEP



(

4$0

GEP

36.

(

%(5

%(5

(

(

(

(
(

'LVWDQFH.P

'LVWDQFH.P

Figure 6 Relationship between BER and distance

Figure 4 The result with 16-PSK modulation

259



Proceedings of IEEE IC-BNMT2013

-4



-2

1.E-02












4G%

1.E-03
BER


4$0
36.
4$0





1.E-04

1.E-05






2615





1.E-06



Optical Pow er(dBm)

Figure 8 Relationship between BER and number

of subcarrier using 16QAM

Figure 7 Relationship between OSNR and Q

Figure 7 shows the relationship between Q and

OSNR(optical signal-to-noise ratio) when 4QAM
16QAM and 16PSK modulation mode is selected.

-4

-2

1.E-02

As can be seen from the figure, when the OSNR is the

same, with the hexadecimal number M increases, the
system Q is decreased, the error rate will be increased.
This is due to the increased number of modulation band,
the QAM signal constellation distance between points is
reduced, and the anti-jamming capability is also reduced.
All of these increase the difficulty of verdict. From the
figure, we also can draw a conclusion that the
performance of 16QAM is better than the performance
of 16PSK. This is because that 16QAM has more
strong anti-interference ability.







BER

1.E-03



1.E-04

1.E-05

1.E-06

3.3 System performance with different number

of subcarriers

Optical Pow er (dBm)

Figure 9 Relationship between BER and number of

subcarrier using 16PSK

In the CO-OFDM, the subcarrier number selection is an

important question. In a certain frequency range, if the
number of subcarriers is too large, inter-channel
interference is more obvious. In contrast, if the number
of subcarriers is too low, the system throughput will be
decreased, and the spectral efficiency will be reduced.
The order of IFFT in OFDM signal of optical
communication transmission can be 128[12], 256[13],
512[14], 1024[15].

Conclusions

The performance of CO-OFDM transmission system is

researched by using different modulation method and
different sub-carrier of the system. The coupled
combined optical power and OSNR (optical
signal-to-noise ratio) is also changed in the research.
The result of simulation shows that system performance
depends on the modulation mode, coupling optical
power, attention of atmosphere, the number of the
subcarrier and OSNR.

Figure 8 shows the BER when the number of subcarriers

was 64, 128, 256 and 512. This figure is got through
changing optical power, by using 16-QAM modulation,
transmission distance of 600km.

From the research we can draw a conclusion that

CO-OFDM system will has anti-error rate capability and
bandwidth efficiency if using the suitable modulation
and coupled combined optical power. Its not only can
be used in the access network, but also has a good
research value and application prospects in long-distance
transmission at high speed.

Figure 9 is got through changing optical power, by using

16-PSK modulation, transmission distance of 600km.As
can be seen from the figure, in a case of the optical
power, bit error rate of the system is higher when the
number of subcarriers is greater, the BER is highest
when the number of carrier is 512, and the BER is
lowest when the number of carrier is 32. This is because
that the influence between two adjoining subcarrier is
more when the number of subcarrier is more.

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