Simulative investigation the impact of optical amplification techniques on single- and dual-electrode MZM and direct modulator's in single-tone RoF system

Since the introduction of erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) in optical fiber communication systems at 1550 nm, the fiber loss is no longer considered as the limiting factor but the fiber dispersion and chirp parameters play an important role in degrading the performance of optical communication systems. Further, the invention of external modulators of Mach-Zehnder (MS) type minimizes the transmission power penalty due to fiber chromatic dispersion as these modulators are consider almost chirp-free modulators. Also, better suppression of nonlinear distortions consists of harmonic distortions (HDs) and intermodulation distortions (IMDs) were achieved by using Mach-Zehnder external modulator [8]. In this work, a simulation comparison of external- and direct-modulation schemes using different optical amplifiers; SOA and EDFA in single-tone RoF system is reported. A single-tone channel of 20 GHz is transmitted over single-mode fiber (SMF) either externally modulated by using single-electrode (SEMZM) – and dual-electrode (DEMZM) – Mach-Zehnder modulator or by direct-modulation scheme. Better improvements in the measurement of received RF power of a 20 km linked single-tone RoF system are achieved by using SEMZM with EDFA, which means maximum optical link is achieved between Central Office (CO) and Base Station (BS). Further, this scheme provides better BER as compare to other schemes discussed in this paper.