All-optical OFDM transmitter design using AWGRs and low-bandwidth modulators

An Arrayed-Waveguide Grating Router (AWGR) can be used as a demultiplexer for an optical OFDM system, as it provides both the serial-to-parallel converter and the optical Fourier transform (FT) in one component. Because an inverse FT is topologically identical to a Fourier transform, the AWGR can also be used as a FT in an OFDM transmitter. In most all-optical OFDM systems the optical modulators are fed with CW tones; however, the subcarriers (SC) will only be perfectly orthogonal if the bandwidth of the data modulators is similar to the total bandwidth of all subcarriers. Using simulations, this paper investigates the reduction in modulator bandwidth that could be achieved if the modulators are placed before an AWGR designed as a FT. This arrangement also allows the complex (IQ) modulators to be replaced with simpler and more-compact phase modulators. We show that these design improvements enable 7.5-GHz bandwidth modulators to be used in a 4 x 10 Gsymbol/s (80 Gbit/s) per polarization per wavelength system. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America