Performance analysis of an all-optical OFDM system in presence of non-linear phase noise

The potential for higher spectral efficiency has increased the interest in all-optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. However, the sensitivity of all-optical OFDM to fiber non-linearity, which causes nonlinear phase noise, is still a major concern. In this paper, an analytical model for estimating the phase noise due to self-phase modulation (SPM), cross-phase modulation (XPM), and four-wave mixing (FWM) in an all-optical OFDM system is presented. The phase noise versus power, distance, and number of subcarriers is evaluated by implementing the mathematical model using Matlab. In order to verify the results, an all-optical OFDM system, that uses coupler-based inverse fast Fourier transform/fast Fourier transform without any nonlinear compensation, is demonstrated by numerical simulation. The system employs 29 subcarriers; each subcarrier is modulated by a 4-QAM or 16-QAM format with a symbol rate of 25 Gsymbol/s. The results indicate that the phase variance due to FWM is dominant over those induced by either SPM or XPM. It is also shown that the minimum phase noise occurs at -3 dBm and -1 dBm for 4-QAM and 16-QAM, respectively. Finally, the error vector magnitude (EVM) versus subcarrier power and symbol rate is quantified using both simulation and the analytical model. It turns out that both EVM results are in good agreement with each other.