Experimental demonstration of the transmission performance
for LDPC-coded multiband OFDM ultra-wideband over fiber system
Jing He
a,b,
⇑
, Xuejie Wen
a
, Ming Chen
a
, Lin Chen
a
, Jinshu Su
b
a
College of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan, China
b
State Key Laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Processing, and School of Computer, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan, China
article info
Article history:
Received 5 May 2014
Revised 22 September 2014
Available online 16 October 2014
Keywords:
Multiband ultra-wideband (MB-UWB)
Low-density parity-check (LDPC)
Orthogonal frequency-division-
multiplexing (OFDM)
Receiver sensitivity
abstract
To improve the transmission performance of multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-
OFDM) ultra-wideband (UWB) over optical fiber, a pre-coding scheme based on low-density parity-check
(LDPC) is adopted and experimentally demonstrated in the intensity-modulation and direct-detection
MB-OFDM UWB over fiber system. Meanwhile, a symbol synchronization and pilot-aided channel esti-
mation scheme is implemented on the receiver of the MB-OFDM UWB over fiber system. The experimen-
tal results show that the LDPC pre-coding scheme can work effectively in the MB-OFDM UWB over fiber
system. After 70 km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) transmission, at the bit error rate of 1 10
3
, the
receiver sensitivities are improved about 4 dB when the LDPC code rate is 75%.
Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
As the rapid growth of the communication capacity demand
such as high definition television and cloud computing, ultra-wide-
band (UWB), which shares the spectrum resources with existing
radio communications system, is recognized as a potential solution
to meet the bandwidth requirements [1]. For the high speed appli-
cations, multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(MB-OFDM) in IEEE 802.15.3a has some advantages such as high
spectral flexibility by dynamically shaping the spectrum, robust-
ness to RF interference and multi-path effects [2]. However, due
to the low power spectral density regulated by the Federal Com-
munications Commission (FCC), the communication distance of a
MB-OFDM UWB wireless system is limited only to several meters.
Recently, MB-OFDM UWB over fiber (UWBoF) technology, devel-
oped to distribute the MB-OFDM UWB signal over a long distance,
was proposed to increase the area of coverage [3,4]. For MB-OFDM
UWB signal transmitted over optical fiber, there is the degradation
of the signal quality due to non-linear effect and dispersion impair-
ments, in particular, accumulated optical amplifier noise, chro-
matic dispersion (CD) and polarization mode dispersion (PMD)
[5]. In the past, in order to avoid the performance degradation
due to adverse channel propagation conditions, a proper forward
error correction (FEC) scheme was used in optical communications
[6]. As an error correcting code, low-density parity-check (LDPC)
code was introduced to increase the system performance of a
radio-over-fiber system and MB-OFDM UWB wireless system
[7,8]. In addition, the short block length LDPC code in the IEEE
802.15.3.c standard was proposed as a low complexity solution
for impulse response (IR)-UWB systems [9]. However, the investi-
gation of the LDPC-coded MB-OFDM UWB signal transmitting over
optical fiber has been seldom reported.
In this paper, for the first time to our knowledge, a pre-coding
scheme based on LDPC in the MB-OFDM UWBoF system is investi-
gated. To avoid inter-symbol interference (ISI) or inter-channel
interference (ICI), a symbol synchronization and pilot-aided
channel estimation scheme is implemented on the LDPC-coded
MB-OFDM UWBoF system. After transmission over 70 km standard
single-mode fiber (SSMF), compared MB-OFDM UWB signal with
and without LPDC-coded, when the LDPC code rate is 75%, the
receiver sensitivities are improved about 4 dB at a BER of
1 10
3
. The experiment results show that short block length
LDPC is effective for MB-OFDM UWBoF system.
2. Principle
2.1. The structure of the IM/DD optical MB-OFDM UWB system
The transmitter and receiver of the LDPC-coded MB-OFDM
UWBoF system are shown in Fig. 1. In the transmitter, pseudo-ran-
dom binary sequences (PRBS) are encoded using LDPC code. The
LDPC code we used is based on WiMAX 802.16e standard [10].
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.yofte.2014.09.006
1068-5200/Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
⇑
Corresponding author at: College of Computer Science and Electronic Engi-
neering, Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan, China. Fax: +86 73188822417.
E-mail address: hnu_jhe@hotmail.com (J. He).
Optical Fiber Technology 21 (2015) 122–127
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Optical Fiber Technology
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