Performance evaluation of CO-OFDM systems based on electrical constant-envelope signals

The influence of the electrical phase modulation index h in the performance of constant-envelope orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CE-OFDM) in coherent detection optical systems is treated analytically and its range of validity examined by simulations. A compromise between h and subcarrier mapping is identified according to differences in sensitivity related to non-linearities inserted by the optical modulator. It is shown that the proposed scheme outperforms conventional coherent detection OFDM systems, which is strongly dependent on both phase and optical modulation indexes.