Modelling and Simulation of High Speed Optical Fiber Communication System with OFDM

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing is considered as a promising technology to satisfy the increased demand for bandwidth in broadband services. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing gained a grate attention in the optical communication community, especially after proposed as the attractive long haul transmission format in coherent detection and direct detection. OFDM has the ability to overcome many optical fiber restrictions such as chromatic dispersion (CD) and polarization mode dispersion (PMD). Moreover, integrating the coherent optical OFDM with Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) systems will provide the transmission system with a high bandwidth, a significant data rates, and a high spectral efficiency. This research focuses on the implementation and performance analysis of high data rate direct and coherent optical OFDM for long haul transmission using Optisystem simulation tool.  QAM is used as a modulation type for the OFDM signal, I/Q modulation is employed at the transmitter, direct and coherent detection is used at the receiver. Three parameters were tested to study the performance of the system and the quality of the signal. These parameters are the Q factor, the bit error rate and the eye diagram.