Comparison and Analysis of DCO-OFDM, ACO-OFDM and ADO-OFDM in IM/DD Systems

Abstract

As a promising modulation technology for optical communication, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is now increasingly used and a lot of ways of improving the optical efficiency of Intensity Modulated/ Direct Detection (IM/DD) systems have been proposed. And real and non-negative OFDM signals are required in this kind of system. Asymmetrically clipped DC biased Optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM), Asymmetrically Clipped Optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM) and Asymmetrically clipped DC biased Optical OFDM (ADO-OFDM) can satisfy this requirement. In this paper, we analysis the properties and performance orderly of the above three systems and simultaneously compare their performance. The simulation results show that DCO-OFDM is efficient in terms of bandwidth while the ACO-OFDM is efficient in terms of optical power. More importantly, ADO-OFDM is both power-efficient and bandwidth-efficient. At the same time, a developmentally proposal for the future OFDM in IM/DD systems is put forward.