Clipping-Enhanced Optical Ofdm For Im/Dd Communication Systems

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a candidate technique to provide high-speed data transmissions for optical communication systems. For intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) optical communication systems, the peak transmitted power limitation of light sources and nonnegative transmitted signal constraints can result in nonlinear distortions from clipping. In this paper, we propose a clipping enhanced optical OFDM (CEO-OFDM) for IM/DD communication systems to reduce the clipping effects. CEO-OFDM transmits the information that results from clipping the peak power, which allows the use of a higher modulation index to improve the signal to noise ratio in exchange for a larger bandwidth. For the same transmitted data rate, CEO-OFDM can achieve a lower bit error rate than DC-biased optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM), asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM) and unipolar OFDM (U-OFDM). By using a larger modulation constellation size, the proposed CEO-OFDM can support a higher throughput than other techniques when the same bit error rate is achieved.