Impact of nonlinear distortion on FDM signals in radio over fiber systems with multiple RF tones

A numerical analysis model is proposed and simulated to evaluate the impact of nonlinear distortion on frequency division multiplexing (FDM) signals in radio over fiber (RoF) systems with multiple tones. Due to the multi-channels for FDM signals, the analysis on nonlinear distortion is quite different from the existing model for two-tone measurements, and the inter-modulation distortion (IMD) products is determined by channel numbers, input signal power and conventional two-tone spurious free dynamic range (SFDR). Based on a series of deducing and calculating, we obtain the important parameter dynamic range, which is beneficial for optimization of the link performance in multi-channels FDM-RoF systems.