Investigation of Noise Sources in Radio-over-Fiber

Systems for Wi-Fi Applications

D. G. Lona and H. E. Hernndez-Figueroa

Arismar Cerqueira S. Jr

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

State University of Campinas
Campinas, Brazil
dglona@dmo.fee.unicamp.br

School of Technology FT
State University of Campinas
Limeira, Brazil

Raphael M. Assumpo, O. C. Branquinho and M. L. F. Abbade

School of Electrical Engineering
Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas
Campinas, Brazil
raphael.ma@puccampinas.edu.br
AbstractThis work presents a experimental and analytical
evaluation of Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) systems applied in Wi-Fi
networks operating at 2.4 GHz. The performance metrics used
were Packet Error Rate (PER), throughput and Relative Signal
Strength Indication (RSSI). We used two different commercial
RoF systems and verified the impact of each system on these
networks. It was observed that Wi-Fi technology can be
successfully applied with RoF technology to provide a remote
employment up to 3 km from central office.
Keywords-component; radio over fiber, hybrid systems, WiFi
and performance analysis.

I.

INTRODUCTION

The use of wireless communications networks has been

quickly increased in the last years and is expected that grow up
even more in next few decades due new applications and
popularization of smartphones. As a result, there will be a
demand increase for high quality transmission speeds to
provide multimedia services and real-time applications for next
generation cell phones and fixed wireless broadband networks.

II.

RADIO OVER FIBER TECHNOLOGY

RoF systems are heterogeneous networks formed by

wireless and optical links where one or multiple analogous
carriers can be transported. Unlike traditional optical systems,
it provides the advantage of eliminating opticalelectronic
(O/E) and electronicoptical (E/O) converters, which results in
low cost maintenance since the Remote Antenna Unit (RAU) is
a lot simplified.
Moreover, the RF signal can be transmitted over an optical
fiber link using directly [4, 5] or externally modulation
technique [5]. Otherwise, on receiver, the signal is recovered
by a simple photodiode and amplified to feed the RAU, as
shows in Fig. 1. Furthermore, this technology enables
management, centralization and processing of network [6]
while is able to be applied in next generation environments,
such in-building coverage [7], outdoor systems [6], and fixed
or mobile broadband wireless access [8, 9].

On the other hand, the radio spectrum is shared into narrow

bands, which are strictly allocated for different applications
resulting in a degradation of signal. In this situation, the RoF
system [1-3] represents a key technology to supply ultra-high
bandwidth using fiber optics advantages, such as low
attenuation, RF transparence and electromagnetic immunity.
In this situation, we evaluated the performance of two
different RoF systems on 2.4 GHz 802.11g Wi-Fi network. It
was also verified each RoF noise sources contribution
according to optical losses increases. The Package Error Rate
(PER) and throughput it were measured as a function of
Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI).
This works is organized as follows. Sections II presents a
review of RoF technology, whereas the system performance is
discussed in Section III. The experimental setup and results are
explained in Section IV. Finally, conclusions are described in
Section V.

Fig. 1 RoF system with direct modulation.

In indoor applications, several Base Stations (BSs) are

distributed inside buildings in order to ensure uniform coverage
[8]. Furthermore, since optical fibers are already installed in the
many of new buildings, RoF technology turned out to be a
good solution for WLAN [9].
However, the RoF performance depends on used RF carrier
frequency and components that system was made. Generally,
for up to 5 GHz, they are based on directly modulation
technique, which uses a laser diode such as DFB [10] or Fabry-

This work is part of FOTONICOM Program, supported by FAPESP

(grant 08/57857-2) and by CNPq (grant 574017/2008-9). It was also
supported by CNPq under grants 309031/2008-7

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97

Prot (FB) [11] to convert RF signal. Recently works

demonstrated that cooled DFB laser diodes [4] and VCSELs
[12] with multi-mode fiber [13] can be used as cost-effective
solution for multiservice environments. Moreover, there are
several commercial solutions of these systems available [14].
III.

directly proportional to the optical power, but the RF power is

equal to the square of the RF current [17].

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS IN ROF SYSTEMS

In RoF system, there are important metrics that define the

link performance which will be described on this section. The
follow analysis was based on the observations present in [1517].
A. Link Gain (G)
In a RoF link with direct modulation and detection (IMDD), the link gain G is giving by [15]:
,

20 log

2 Lo

10 log

where tx,RF is the transmitter RF efficiency, , rx,RF is the

receiver efficiency, Lo is the optical path loss and ROUT and RIN
are the output/input system impedances. The units for tx,RF and
rx,RF are mA/mW and mW/mA, respectively, and Glink, is
commonly referred in dB.
The Fig. 2 illustrates RoF modules inside using IM-DD
technique and respectively photodetector noise sources. The
transmitter includes a laser diode, with a typical low impedance
and use a series resistor RIN for increase the total input
impedance up to the external signal source. Otherwise, the
receiver module is composed by a simple photodiode with
typical impedance of some k. To matching the output
impedance ROUT with photodiode a parallel resistor Rs is used,
improving the VSWR.
However, this results on an outpout current Iout lower than
the produced by photodiode Ipd, thus the RF receiver
efficiency, rx,RF, is smaller than the responsivity of the
photodiode chip alone sPD, as following [16]:
2

Figure 2 IM-DD RoF and Noises

B. Noise
On link design, noise is one of major problems and thus
must need to be considerate. This is commonly specified as
sum of all noises sources present in the system which is given
by most manufacturers as Equivalent Input Noise (EIN) and is
expressed in dBm/Hz [17].
There are tree mainly noise sources in the RoF systems,
which are: Laser noise, Shot noise and Thermal noise. The
Laser noise comes from random fluctuations in the optical
signal intensity due spontaneous emission and electron-hole
pair recombination, resulting in light intensity variation and
frequency emission oscillations.
This noise is often referred as Relative Intensity Noise
(RIN), because it is the ratio of the mean square amplitude of
the noise fluctuations per unit bandwidth, <P>, to the square
of the optical power, Po [17]:

The RIN contribution on the system EIN is giving by [16]:

In other words, for a resistively-matched photodiode, the

RF efficiency is giving by:
3
2
On the other hand, the RF transmitter does not experienced
similar decrease because the matching resistor is placed in
series, Fig. 2.a, resulting in a RF transmitter efficiency equal as
the laser slope (SL).
,

For optical link-budget, the optical loss Lo is given by [17]:

,

10 log

,
,

where Ptx is the optical power immediately at transmitter

output and Prx is the optical power at receiver input. In this
case, is also important to observe that each dB of optical loss
mean in a 2 dB decrease on RF channel due the RF current is

6
1000
where Idc is the laser dc bias current in mA, ITH is the laser
threshold current, RIN is the laser input impedance, Mdc is the dc
modulation gain of the laser diode at used frequency and tx,RF
is the RF efficiency of the transmitter.
,

The second important link noise is the shot noise. The shot
noise comes from random fluctuations of photons arriving at
photodetector, which generates a random noisiness in the
current at the output of the photodiode. The contribution from
shot noise in EIN per unit bandwidth can be expressed as [16]:
,

2e
,

Lo

where PLaser is the optical power at transmitter output, e is

the electron elementary charge, tx,RF is the transmitter
efficiency, RIN is the input impedance, Sp is the photodiode
efficiency and Lo is the optical path loss.

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Finally, the third and last noise source is the thermal noise
that comes from random carrier moves in conductor and rises
with current fluctuations. The thermal noise is expressed as
[17]:

TABLE I.

174

As result, the total EIN of link is the sum of these three

contributions [17]:
,

10

In Fig. 2 is illustrated how each noise source affects the link

performance. The two mainly sources of noise that will be
problematic are RIN and Shot noise. The RIN is detected with
RF signal resulting in a noise current in parallel with the
photodetected signal current IPd whereas the Shot noise comes
from photodetection process creating a parallel noise current
source.
Generally, in telecommunications systems, there is another
noise metric which is known as Noise Figure (NF) which is the
ratio in dB between a perfect system without noise and the
equivalent input noise of analyzed system, giving by [17]:
,

ROF SYSTEMS PARAMETERS

where kb is the Boltzmann constant, T is the absolute

temperature and f is the bandwidth. In an environment
situation of 25 C, 50 load resistance and 1 Hz bandwidth,
thermal noise is approximately -174dBm/Hz. This noise is also
referred as EIN by [16]:
,

RoF#2. Each RoF system has different parameters, such as:

laser wavelength (), RIN, Noise Figure (NF) and EIN. The
Table 1 summarizes their datasheet values at 2.4GHz.

174

Parameters

RoF

EIN
(dBm/Hz)

(nm)

NF (dB)

RIN
(dBm/Hz)

Pout
(mW)

1
2

-126
-147

1310
1550

48
27

-140
-155

4
4

It was used an optical link composed by 3 km of SMF-28

fiber with attenuation of 0.22 dB/km at 1550 nm and 0.33
dB/km at 1310 nm. Fiber dispersion is approximately 16
ps/nm/km/nm at 1550 and negligible at 1310 nm. The timeout
of acknowledgment frames in Wi-Fi medium access control
(MAC) limits the links length to few kilometers [19] thus it
was used 3 km in tests. The Variable Attenuator was applied to
emulate RF signal decrease as the client moves away from the
receiver.
The Fig. 4 demonstrates the experimental results of PER in
each configuration as function of RSSI. It was observed that
RoF#2 has 21dB better performance than RoF#1. This
performance gap is due different components used in each
system, which can improve or reduce the total EIN and noise
figure of link.

11

In RoF systems, each noise source has different

contribution according to the amount of optical loss. Usually,
the RIN is constant while shot increase proportional to the
optical loss and thermal is square proportional for it [16].
IV.

EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND RESULTS

The experimental setup is illustrated in Fig. 3 and was

based on the following equipments: two computers (Server and
Client), 2.4GHz RF circulators with insertion loss of 0.6 dB
and isolation of 23 dB, a RF Variable Attenuator (VA), 3 km of
single-mode fiber, an Access Point (AP), two RF Anechoic
Chambers (RFAC) used for RF isolation between terminals
and two commercial RoF systems. To generate traffic in the
network, the computers were connected by sniffer software
called JPerf [18]. This software is able to measure the network
throughput and the Packet Error Rate (PER).

Fig.3 Experimental Setup.

Firstly, the Wi-Fi network connection was performed

without RoF systems in order to obtain RF link performance as
a reference. The analyzed parameters are: RSSI, PER and
throughput. Secondly, we analyze the link performance using
two commercial RoF systems, which are named RoF#1 and

Figure 4 PER vs RSSI

On the other hand, Fig. 5 exhibits the throughout

performance as RSSI decrease. In this case, the RF link started
a reduction of throughput around -73 dBm for RF Link
whereas the RoF#1 is on -47 dBm and RoF-2 on -65 dBm,
which means in a RSSI penalty compared with RF link of 26
dB and 8 dB respectively.
Aim to understand this performance difference between
RoF systems we used the equations described in Section III to
verify each noise source contribution and also the noise figure
according to RIN values present on systems datasheet.
In these cases we assumed a resistive match between input
and output and (Mdc/tx,RF) = 1. Firstly, using the equations (10)
and (6) it was evaluated the noise figure of each RoF system as
RIN increase. The results are presented in Figure 6. It was

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obtained that the lowest NF for RoF#1 is 35 dB at -165

dBm/Hz of RIN whereas for RoF#2 it is 25 dB. This difference
comes from laser diodes efficiency used in each RoF system
which was 0.25 A/W for RoF#2 and 0.1 A/W for RoF#1.
Furthermore, the used laser diodes have distinct bias current,
resulting in a different RIN contribution.

The Figure 7 exhibits noise sources contribution for RoF#1

according optical loss raises.

The RIN contribution on EIN increases when high bias

current is applied, affecting the NF of system as well. Indeed,
for RoF#2, the RIN contribution is lower than RoF#1 due
lower RIN, higher laser efficiency and reduced bias current
giving a NF improvement of 21 dB.

Figure 7- RoF-1: Noise Sources Contribution

It was verified that the strongly noise source comes from

laser and is dominant until 10 dB of optical loss when it is
overcome by thermal noise. Furthermore, the shot and thermal
noises always stayed below laser noise.

Figure 5 Throughput vs RSSI

According to RIN values presents in Table 1, the calculated

noise figure for RoF#1 is 47.2 dB whereas RoF#2 exhibited
28.8 dB. These values are very closer to datasheet information
provided by manufacturers. Moreover, it shows that the
calculated performance difference between RoF#1 and RoF#2
is equal to 19 dB which agrees with experimental results that
demonstrated 21 dB.

On the other hand, the EIN variation in RoF#2, shown in

Fig. 8, is very different of RoF#1. In this system, could be
observed that the laser noise is around -147 dBm/Hz, which is
much lower than RoF#1 and comes from the reduced RIN
value, higher laser efficiency and lower bias current used on it
transmitter.
It was verified the laser noise dominates until 3 dB when is
overcome by shot noise. The shot noise stills the main noise
source up to 6 dB of optical loss when switches to thermal. As
expected, in systems with high-quality transmitters most part of
the noise comes from shot and thermal noise.
As result, most part of noise in RoF#1 comes from laser
while in RoF#2 is shared between the three named sources as
optical losses increases. On situations of low losses, the RoF#2
is mainly dominated by laser noise than for losses between 2-5
dB the noise source is changed to shot noise and above this
value is dominated by thermal noise.

Figure 6 Noise Figure vs RIN.

The noise sources contributions on EIN vary according to

optical losses. To observe these variations and define what
noise source is limiting the system at defined optical loss it was
performed calculations using equations described on Section
III for both RoF systems.

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Figure 8 RoF-2: Noise Sources Contribution

V.

[9]

CONCLUSIONS

We experimentally demonstrated that RoF system can be

successfully applied as backhaul for Wi-Fi networks located up
to 3 km from the central office. The system performance is
limited by noise figure, which is mainly influenced by laser
noise.
In order, to reduce noise figure than extend the cell
coverage in Wi-Fi networks, using direct modulation technique
on a RoF environment, is important to use lasers with highquality which means high slope efficiency, lower RIN (less
than -140 dBm/Hz) and reduced laser bias current. These lasers
diodes also must be cheap and able to offers slope efficiency
equal or more than 0,25mW/mA. Moreover, they need to have
broadband operation to provide multi-services employment.
Finally, for a cost-effective solution one promising
technology is VCSELs which are cheap, has lower power
consumption and reduced bias-current with RIN values around
-130 dBm/Hz. Furthermore, they can operate at 1550 nm
optical window giving lowest attenuation and WDM
technology features.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]

[18]
[19]

The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support

from CAPES under CePOF and FOTONICOM contracts, the
Research Lab. of Radio communication (LP-SiRa) at Pontifical
Catholic University of Campinas (PUC-Campinas) funded by
FINEP and to thanks Hugo L. Fragnito from IFGWUNICAMP for providing some components used in
experiments.

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