Subcarrier Index-Power Modulated Optical OFDM and Its Performance in IMDD PON Systems

A novel transmission technique known as subcarrier index-power modulated optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (SIPM-OOFDM) is proposed, for the first time, by introducing an extra subcarrier index-power information-bearing dimension into conventional OOFDM. Detailed numerical simulations are undertaken of SIPM-OOFDM performance characteristics to identify optimum SIPM-OOFDM transceiver parameters and also to explore corresponding maximum achievable transmission performances over passive optical network systems based on intensity-modulation and direct-detection. It is shown that, compared to conventional OOFDM, SIPM-OOFDM offers considerable signal transmission capacity improvement without increasing minimum required optical signal-to-noise ratios and degrading chromatic dispersion/nonlinearity tolerances.