Comparison of external intensity modulators for multicarrier optical wireless communication systems

The nonlinearity aspects of two widely used types of external intensity modulators, Electroabsorption modulators (EAMs) and Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZMs) are investigated in the context of multicarrier high speed optical wireless systems. The effect of number of subcarriers on system performance is examined and quantitative performance parameters are calculated to illustrate the comparative performance between the two types of modulators.