An analytic technique to assess the impact of non-linearities on the error probability of OFDM signals in RoF based wireless networks

We propose an analytic technique, based on the Volterra series, to assess the impact of nonlinearities on the error probability of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals in radio over fibre (RoF) based wireless networks. We consider OFDM/BPSK signals and we determine the error probability of these signals in an illustrative RoF system, where either a semiconductor laser diode (SLD) or a Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) are used to generate these signals, with good agreement between analysis and simulation.