Modelling of a DFB Laser at Low Bias Directly

Modulated with an OFDM Signal for RoF Applications

P. Assimakopoulos, L. C. Vieira, A. Nkansah, D. Wake
and N. J. Gomes

F. van Dijk
Alcatel-Thals III-V Lab, Joint lab of Bell Labs
and Thales Research & Technology
Palaiseau, France
frederic.vandijk@3-5lab.fr

Broadband and Wireless Communications Group

Department of Electronics
University of Kent
Canterbury, UK
pa80@kent.ac.uk, lcv3@kent.ac.uk
AbstractA DFB laser biased at a low bias point is modeled
using a modified AM/AM Rapp model. Distortion effects are
simulated and compared to the analytical predictions made by
Bussgangs theorem for soft limiter nonlinearity.

I.

INTRODUCTION

A laser biased at a low bias point offers certain

advantages, namely low power consumption and longer life
time. Low power consumption may be particularly important
for Power over Fiber (PoF) applications [1]. The RF response
at low bias approximates a soft limiter nonlinearity and thus
Bussgangs theorem can be applied without requiring the use
of numerical solutions since closed form expressions can be
readily obtained. Distortion is a particular problem when
transmitting signals with large Peak-to-Average Power Ratio
(PAPR) such as OFDM. The baseband discrete OFDM
symbol is given by [2]:
x[n] =

N 1

k =0

Xke

j22
N

(1)

The theoretical maximum PAPR for an OFDM signal with

QPSK modulation is 10logN, where N is the number of
subcarriers. However, this maximum value is statistically
insignificant. Through the Central Limit Theorem (CLT), the
OFDM signal can be approximated as the sum of Gaussian Inphase and Quadrature components and will therefore have an
envelope following a Rayleigh distribution [3]. By exploiting
the statistics of the OFDM signal a more practical value can
be obtained for the PAPR, of about 12.3 dB for 2048
subcarriers. This value is still high and some form of
compensation might be required, the simplest being the power
backoff of the nonlinear device. In the case of a low biased
laser this option might not be available but depending on
system requirements, a certain amount of distortion might be
tolerable.

II.

THEORY

A.

Distortion noise
The high PAPR of the OFDM signal means that peaks of
the Rayleigh envelope will be clipped if a nonlinear device is
used in the signal chain such as an amplifier, DAC etc. In an
optical link, the nonlinearity is mainly due to the laser. The
distortion from the nonlinear power transfer function of the
laser will result in distortion noise that will degrade the
Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of the system.

Using the complex form of Bussgangs theorem, for a

Gaussian input x(t), the output y(t) of a nonlinearity will be
given by the sum of a useful attenuated term and uncorrelated
distortion noise d(t) [4, 5, 6]:
y(t) = x(t) + d(t)

(2)

where is a function of the nonlinearity, proportional to the

cross-correlation of the input signal with the output signal, and
is given by:
=

Rxy(0)
1
=
f(r) r p(r)dr
Rxx(0) 2 2 0

(3)

where f(r) is the nonlinear function, p(r) is the Rayleigh PDF

and 22 is the input power to the nonlinearity. It has to be
noted that for an AM/AM nonlinearity, will be a real
quantity. The Gaussian input assumption is met by assuming
independent and identically distributed (iid) frequency
samples (Xk). The first assumption is met by randomizing the
input symbols and the second by deriving all symbols from the
same constellation. The distortion noise can be assumed as
zero mean and under certain assumptions as zero mean
AWGN [3]. Based on (2) a model can be used, similar to [4]
but adapted for an optical link (Fig.1). In this case, n(t) will

include the main optical link noise contributions namely,

Relative Intensity Noise (RIN) from the laser, shot and
thermal noises from the Photodiode (PD), d(t) is the distortion
noise and h(t) is the impulse response of the optical link.

Fig.1: Optical link equivalent circuit.

At the OFDM receiver, following the Cyclic Prefix (CP)
removal and assuming a zero forcing equalization, the
estimate for the transmitted symbol at subcarrier k and OFDM
symbol m will be given by:
m [k] = X m [k] + (d m [k] + n m [k])
X

For Nyquist rate sampling, the distortion noise will fall inband and assuming the same average power per subcarrier, the
signal to noise ratio at the output of the optical link will be
given by:
2 2 2
d2 + 2n

The experimental set-up is depicted in Figure 2. The

experimental set-up consisted of a 1550-nm distributed
feedback (DFB) laser from Alcatel-Thales III-V Labs, a
FC/APC-FC/PC fibre patch cord and an Appointech InGaAs
PIN photodiode, with bandwidth of 2.5 GHz and responsivity
of 1 A/W. A Mini-Circuits bias-T was used to bias the PD at
-5V. The laser was biased at 35 mA and 37 mA through its
internal bias circuit, with the temperature maintained at 25oC.
These bias currents are near the laser threshold current of
29 mA. A sinusoidal signal of 2.4 GHz was applied by an
Agilent E4438C Vector Signal Generator (VSG), and the
output power was measured after the photodiode by an
Agilent E4440A Vector Signal Analyser (VSA) connected to a
laptop with Agilent VSA software. The input power at the
laser was varied from -41 dBm to +9 dBm, in order to find a
hard clipping laser operation.

(4)

where n m [k ] includes the other noise contributions scaled by

the sampled frequency response of the optical link. The first
part on the right hand side of (4) represents the useful signal
while the terms in brackets represent the samples of the
distortion and other noise contributions at the location of
subcarrier k.

SNR Rx =

amplitude characteristic, known as AM/AM, is obtained from

the input-output measured data.

(5)

where d2 is the distortion noise variance and n2 is the

variance of the other noise contributions. The expressions for
the attenuation factor () and the distortion noise variance for
the soft limiter case can be found in [7]. It has to be noted, that
in the case where oversampling is applied in the OFDM
system, the result provided by (5) will underestimate the SNR
as some of the distortion noise will fall out-of-band.
The EVM can be calculated using:

Fig.2: Experimental set-up.

The measured data were modeled, at first, by the following
7th-order polynomial
g = p 7 A 7 + p 6 A 6 + p 5 A 5 + p 4 A 4 + p 3 A 3 + p 2 A 2 + p1A

where A is the input amplitude.

The coefficients of (7) for 35-mA and 37-mA bias current
are given in Table I. The AM/AM characteristics of the DFB
laser are shown in Figure 3. These models were fitted using a
Trust-Region algorithm, there being obtained a root mean
square error (RMSE) of 0.0001127 for the 35-mA bias and an
RMSE of 9.00410-5 for the 37-mA bias.
Table I: Coefficients for the polynomial AM/AM model.

EVM = 1/SNR

III.

(6)

AM/AM MODELS

We present here an experimental approach to model a

directly modulated DFB laser at low bias: that is, for a hard
clipping condition. In this approach, a black-box modeling
technique is applied to model the laser nonlinearity. More
specifically, the nonlinear effects of the link are observed
when the input RF power is varied, that is, the nonlinear

(7)

p1
p2
p3
p4
p5
p6
p7

35-mA bias
0.14749
3.27611
-105.859
1137.32
-5924.12
15150.18
-15239.42

p1
p2
p3
p4
p5
p6
p7

37-mA bias
0.16025
-1.59453
43.116
-580.74
3562.69
-10172.28
11043.86

Fig.3: AM/AM characteristic of the DFB laser using 7th-order

polynomial model.
Polynomials are commonly used to model directlymodulated lasers [8, 9] because their coefficients can be
extracted using straightforward least square fitting algorithms,
and they can be directly related to a physical meaning.
However, the use of polynomials is generally limited to
modeling mild nonlinearities.
Due to the fact that the measurement data comes from a
strong nonlinear behavior, a second model was also extracted
based on the Rapp model [10] and named here modified Rapp
model, given by
g Rapp =

kA
1.6

as

1+ A
SAT

2S

(8)

Fig.4: AM/AM characteristic of the DFB laser using modified

Rapp model.
IV.

SIMULATION RESULTS

The simulation was carried out in MatlabTM -SimulinkTM,

for an OFDM signal with 2048 subcarriers and QPSK
modulation. The analytical EVM obtained from the
expressions outlined in section 2 was compared to the EVM
obtained by simulating an OFDM link with a nonlinearity
given by the modified Rapp or polynomial equations of
section 3. The sampling was done at the Nyquist rate i.e. no
oversampling was performed. The other optical noise
contributions were not taken into account. The EVM is plotted
against (Fig.5) which is the square root of the input power
back-off and is often referred to as the clipping ratio. In Figure
5, is plotted in linear terms (or from 3.5 dB to 9.5 dB).

where A is the input amplitude, SAT the saturation and S the

smoothness coefficients.
The coefficients of (8) for 35-mA and 37-mA bias current
are given in Table II. The AM/AM characteristics are shown
in Figure 4. These models were also fitted using a TrustRegion algorithm, there being obtained an RMSE of
8.79510-5 for the 35-mA bias case and of 9.12610-5 for the
37-mA bias.
Table II: Coefficients for the modified Rapp AM/AM model.
k
SAT
a
s

35-mA bias
0.1760
0.0434
0.8749
22.27

37-mA bias
k
0.1448
SAT
0.0780
a
0.9172
s
5.84

Fig.5: Simulation results for biases of 35 mA and 37 mA.

The simulation result shows that there is agreement
between the analytical and simulated results but the
correlation between the two depends, as expected, on the bias
point. The result for 37 mA deviates more from the analytical

curve. This is a result of the change in laser response as the

bias is increased: more distortion is coming from points in the
laser response away from the threshold point and as a result
the response is less similar to a soft limiter. However, the
deviation between the analytical and simulated curves depends
on the AM/AM modeling and how well this fits the
measurements. This is shown if Figure 6 as a comparison
between the modified Rapp and the polynomial models.

consumption is of prime importance, depending on the system

requirements, a certain amount of distortion can be tolerated.
The simple analytical approach shown here can be used to
define the operational parameters for which the system
requirements are fulfilled. That is, a balance point can be
defined between low power consumption and tolerable
distortion. Furthermore, it has been shown that a modified
Rapp model can better model a laser at low bias compared to a
polynomial model.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was carried out within the framework of the
European Union Integrated Project FUTON (FP7 ICT-2007215533). Luis C. Vieira is sponsored by the Brazilian
Government through CNPq and UTFPR, whose support is
gratefully acknowledged. A. Enard, F. Blache and M. Goix
from Alcatel-Thales III-V Lab performed the packaging of the
laser module.

REFERENCES
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Fig.6: Comparison between modified Rapp and polynomial

models at 35 mA with respect to the analytical result.
The deviation from the analytical curve at low clipping
ratios is higher for the polynomial model which has a
smoother turn instead of a rapid transition into clipping. The
deviation at higher clipping ratios which appears like an
overshoot from the analytical curve is due to in-part to the
smoother transition into the clipping region which affects a
higher range of amplitudes of the signal and due to the
deviation between the modeled and measured data in the
linear region of the DFB laser response. Furthermore,
Bussgangs theorem is an approximation in itself and the DFB
laser response below threshold, although close, is not a soft
limiter response.
V.

CONCLUSIONS

The results indicate that the analytical approach following

from the complex form of Bussgangs theorem for the case of
a soft limiter nonlinearity is a good approximation for the
distortion effects of a laser at low bias and can offer a crude
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