Experimental and Theoretical Investigations of Intensity-Modulation and Direct-Detection Optical Fast-OFDM Over MMF-Links

We demonstrate the first experimental implementation of a 3.9-Gb/s differential binary phase-shift keying (DBPSK)-based double sideband (DSB) optical fast orthogonal frequency-division-multiplexing (FOFDM) system with a reduced subcarrier spacing equal to half the symbol rate over 300 m of multimode fiber (MMF) using intensity-modulation and direct-detection (IM/DD). The required received optical power at a bit-error rate (BER) of 10
^-3
was measured to be ~-14.2 dBm with a receiver sensitivity penalty of only ~0.2 dB when compared to the back-to-back case. Experimental results agree very well with the theoretical predictions.