Performance analysis of OFDM technology on radio-over-fiber systems

Dissertação de mest., Engenharia Eletrónica e Telecomunicações, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Univ. do Algarve, 2011Nowadays, the demand for high speed, high quality and diversity in distributed services presents a challenge for telecommunication technology. Wireless systems provide the accessibility to end-user, but are not the solution for long distance links. Currently, the ideal technology for long-range transmissions at high data rates is optical fiber. Hence, a new concept for high capacity networks emerges, with centralized services into Base Stations (BS) engineered to provide flexibility and control over the system, and to perform operations such as electrical to optical domain conversion and modulation. Such Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) networks also appear as an attractive technology because they are efficient and cost effective. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technology is widely used in a number of standards. For instance, it is actually the Multi-Carrier Modulation (MCM) technique applied in 802.11a/g/n wireless standards and in Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial (DVB-T), among other prevailing systems, which makes this subject one particularly pertinent to study. OFDM systems are an appealing choice for waveform modulation, as they are very bandwidth efficient comparing to others MCM, and provide flexibility in data transmission rates. Additionally, an important advantage dwells in its natural robustness against severely interfering environments. In this thesis, fundamentals on OFDM technology are extensively described, and its application to wireless and optical fiber networks is introduced. The combined channel effects of these technologies on OFDM signals are investigated. In terms of performance analysis, this exposition focuses on understanding the importance of OFDM modulation parameters, and explores some OFDM signal properties. To achieve this, a simulator was implemented with Matlab to create arbitrary OFDM waveforms and emulate channel effects. This study also investigates the efficiency of OFDM technology over a real Radio Frequency (RF) system with an ideal communication channel. Finally, an experimental RoF configuration is implemented and its performance is assessed