Design of Optical I/Q Modulator Using Dual-drive Mach-Zehnder Modulators in Coherent Optical-OFDM System.

A CO-OFDM system combines the advantages of both coherent detection and OFDM modulation for future high speed fiber transmission. In this paper, we propose an I/Q modulation technique using dual-drive MZMs for high rate 10 Gb/s CO-OFDM system. The proposed modulator provides 10.63 dBm improved optical spectra compared to a single dual-drive MZM. The simulation results in terms of BER and Q factor are quite satisfactory upto a transmission reach of 3,000 km and that to without making use of any dispersion compensation. A BER of about 8.03×10⁻¹⁰ and 15.06 dB Q factor have been achieved at −10.43 dBm received optical power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]