Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a modulation technique which is now used in most new and emerging broadband wired and wireless communication systems because it is an effective solution to intersymbol interference caused by a dispersive channel. Very recently a number of researchers have shown that OFDM is also a promising technology for optical communications. This paper gives a tutorial overview of OFDM highlighting the aspects that are likely to be important in optical applications. To achieve good performance in optical systems OFDM must be adapted in various ways. The constraints imposed by single mode optical fiber, multimode optical fiber and optical wireless are discussed and the new forms of optical OFDM which have been developed are outlined. The main drawbacks of OFDM are its high peak to average power ratio and its sensitivity to phase noise and frequency offset. The impairments that these cause are described and their implications for optical systems discussed.

A new technique for using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) in optical systems is presented. Clipped OFDM is derived from a bipolar OFDM waveform by setting the negative values to zero. It has an optical efficiency 8 dB better than DC biased OFDM. If only the odd OFDM subcarriers are modulated, the clipping noise is orthogonal to the wanted signal.

In this paper, three forms of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) designed for intensity modulated/direct detection (IM/DD) optical systems are compared. These are asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM), DC biased optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM) and asymmetrically clipped DC biased optical OFDM (ADO-OFDM). ADO-OFDM is a new technique that combines aspects of ACO-OFDM and DCO-OFDM by simultaneously transmitting ACO-OFDM on the odd subcarriers and DCO-OFDM on the even subcarriers. The odd subcarriers are demodulated as in a conventional ACO-OFDM receiver and the even subcarriers are demodulated using a form of interference cancellation. ADO-OFDM is shown to be more optically power efficient than conventional ACO-OFDM and DCO-OFDM, for some bit rate/normalized bandwidths. It is also shown that by varying the proportion of optical power on the ACO-OFDM component, the DC bias level of DCO-OFDM and the constellations sent on the odd and even subcarriers, the optical power efficiency of ADO-OFDM can be changed.

It is shown that repeated clipping and frequency domain filtering of an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal can significantly reduce the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted signal. The technique causes no increase in out-of-band power. Significant PAPR reduction can be achieved with only moderate levels of clipping noise.

We present theoretical and simulation results for the performance of asymmetrically-clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM) and DC-biased optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM) in AWGN for intensity-modulated direct-detection systems. Constellations from 4 QAM to 1024 QAM are considered. For DCO-OFDM, the optimum bias depends on the constellation size which limits its performance in adaptive systems. ACO-OFDM requires less optical power for a given data rate than DCO-OFDM for all but the largest constellations and is better suited to adaptive systems as the same structure is optimum for all constellations.