IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 12, NO.
5, MAY 2008
Comparison of Asymmetrically Clipped Optical OFDM and
DC-Biased Optical OFDM in AWGN
Jean Armstrong, Senior Member, IEEE, and Brendon J. C. Schmidt, Student Member, IEEE
Abstract— We present theoretical and simulation results for
the performance of asymmetrically-clipped optical OFDM (ACO-
OFDM) and DC-biased optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM) in AWGN
for intensity-modulated direct-detection systems. Constellations
from 4 QAM to 1024 QAM are considered. For DCO-OFDM,
the optimum bias depends on the constellation size which limits
its performance in adaptive systems. ACO-OFDM requires less
optical power for a given data rate than DCO-OFDM for all but
the largest constellations and is better suited to adaptive systems
as the same structure is optimum for all constellations.
Index Terms— OFDM, intensity modulated direct detection,
asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM, DC-biased optical OFDM.
I. I NTRODUCTION
FDM is used extensively in broadband wired and wire-
O less communication systems because it is an effective so-
lution to intersymbol interference (ISI) caused by a dispersive
channel. Very recently, a number of papers have described the
use of OFDM in a range of optical systems including optical
wireless, multimode fiber and single mode fiber [1-3].
When OFDM is used in a radio frequency wireless system,
the complex baseband OFDM signal is used to modulate
the amplitude and phase of the radio frequency carrier. In
contrast, current multimode fiber and optical wireless systems
use intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD): the
baseband signal, x (t), modulates the intensity of the optical
frequency carrier not its amplitude and phase. This means that
x (t) must be real and positive. In OFDM IM/DD systems,
a real OFDM signal can be generated by constraining the
input vector to the transmitter inverse fast Fourier transform
(IFFT) to have Hermitian symmetry. The signal can be made
positive either by adding a DC bias, as in DC biased optical
OFDM (DCO-OFDM) [1, 4, 5], or by clipping at zero and
transmitting only the positive parts of the OFDM waveform
as in asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM)
[6].
In [7] ACO-OFDM and DCO-OFDM were compared with
more traditional optical modulation schemes such as on-off
keying (OOK) and pulse-position modulation (PPM). In this
paper we extend the comparison to larger quadrature amplitude
modulation (QAM) constellation sizes.
Recently, a number of papers have described IM/DD optical
OFDM implementations using large constellations. Lee et
Manuscript received February 5, 2008. The associate editor coordinating the
review of this letter and approving it for publication was M. Uysal. This work
was supported under the Australian Research Council’s Discovery funding
scheme (DP 0772937).
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Sys-
tems Engineering, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia (e-mail:
jean.armstrong@eng.monash.edu.au).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2008.080193.
1089-7798/08$25.00

c 2008 IEEE
343
al. [2] implemented a multimode fiber system which used
constellations up to 64 QAM. There is also growing interest
in adaptive modulation for optical OFDM. Tang et al. [8]
simulated adaptively modulated DCO-OFDM for multimode
fibers and considered constellations up to 256 QAM, while
Gonzalez et al. [1] considered constellations up to 16 QAM
for an optical wireless application.
This paper compares ACO-OFDM and DCO-OFDM for
larger constellations. For DCO-OFDM the performance de-
pends on the bias level and the optimum bias depends on the
constellation sizes. This paper analyses the effect of bias level
on DCO-OFDM. In OFDM, data is transmitted in parallel
on many subcarriers. So even when the overall channel is
frequency selective, the subchannel through which a given
subcarrier is transmitted is approximately flat. Thus for OFDM
the performance in AWGN forms a theoretical basis from
which the results for the more general case of a frequency
selective channel can be found. These new results provide a
basis for designing future IM/DD systems.
II. C OMPARISON OF IM/DD M ODULATION S CHEMES
There is no simple way to compare modulation schemes for
IM/DD because the BER depends on the signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR) of the electrical signal after direct detection whereas
the main system constraint is usually the average transmitted
optical power. For a signal x (t), the optical power, Popt ,
depends on E{x} and the electrical power, Pelec , depends on
E{x2 } so the conversion between optical power and electrical
power depends on the statistics of the time domain signal.
Without loss of generality we define Popt = E{x} and Pelec =
E{x2 }. In this paper we consider the optical energy per bit to
single-sided noise power spectral density Eb(opt) /N0 as this
metric takes into account the different efficiency of optical-to-
electrical conversion of the optical OFDM techniques.
III. BER AS A F UNCTION OF E LECTRICAL Eb /N0
In ACO-OFDM the bipolar OFDM signal generated by the
transmitter IFFT is made unipolar by clipping the signal at
zero

x0 (t) if x0 (t) > 0
x(t) = (1)
0 if x0 (t) ≤ 0
where x0 (t) is the unclipped OFDM signal [6]. It can be
shown that if only the odd frequency subcarriers are modulated
all of the intermodulation caused by clipping falls on the
even subcarriers and does not affect the data-carrying odd
subcarriers [6]. The odd frequency and Hermitian constraint
together mean that there are only N/4 independent complex
input values for an N point IFFT.
344 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 12, NO. 5, MAY 2008

0
Fig. 1 shows simulation results for the BER of ACO-OFDM 10
Bipolar 4−QAM
as a function Eb( elec) /N0 for different QAM constellations ACO−4QAM
and an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. This ACO−16QAM
−1 ACO−64QAM
model is commonly used in optical wireless systems where 10 ACO−256QAM
the noise is bipolar (not unipolar) because the main noise ACO−1024QAM

Bit Error Rate

source is in the electrical front-end of the receiver. Fig. 1
also shows the theoretical curve for bipolar 4 QAM. 4-QAM 10
−2

ACO-OFDM requires 3 dB more power than bipolar 4 QAM.

This has a simple theoretical explanation: in ACO-OFDM only
half of the electrical power is used on the odd frequency, −3
10
data-carrying subcarriers. The other half is used on the even
subcarriers to make the ACO-OFDM signal unipolar [6]. This
is also true for all constellation sizes so ACO-OFDM always −4
10
requires 3 dB more power than a bipolar system using the 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
same constellation. Eb(elec)/N0 (dB)

In DCO-OFDM the bipolar OFDM signal is converted to a

unipolar signal by adding a DC bias, BDC . In practice because Fig. 1. BER in AWGN versus Eb(elec) /N0 for bipolar 4 QAM and ACO-
OFDM using 4 QAM, 16 QAM, 64 QAM, 256 QAM, and 1024 QAM.
an OFDM signal has a Gaussian distribution, if BDC is not to
be excessive, the peaks of the negative going signal must first 1
10
be clipped. This adds a clipping noise component, nC (BDC ), Bipolar 4−QAM
4−QAM 7dB
which increases as BDC decreases and affects all subcarriers. 4−QAM 13dB
16−QAM 7dB
0
10 16−QAM 13dB
x(t) = x0 (t) + BDC + nC (BDC ) ≈ x0 (t) + BDC (2) 64−QAM 7dB
64−QAM 13dB
256−QAM 7dB
The optimum clipping level depends on the signal constel- 256−QAM 13dB
Bit Error Rate

−1
10
lation. For practical BERs, large constellations such as 256
QAM require very high SNRs, so clipping noise must be very
low and therefore BDC must be large. This also increases −2
10

the optical power because, Popt = E{x} ≈ BDC . Unlike

ACO-OFDM where the same configuration is optimum for all −3
10
constellations, when DCO-OFDM is combined with adaptive
modulation and different constellations are used on different
subcarriers, BDC cannot be optimized for all constellation −4
10
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
sizes. The Hermitian constraint means that for DCO-OFDM E /N (dB)
there are N/2 independent complex inputs for an N point b(elec) 0

IFFT, so for a given constellation size the data rate of DCO-
OFDM is twice that of ACO-OFDM.
Fig. 2 shows the BER of DCO-OFDM for 4, 16, 64 and
256 QAM and for BDC set relative to the power of x0 (t),
 the frequency response of the optical-to-electrical conversion
BDC = k E{x20 (t)} (3)
We define this as a bias of 10 log10 (k 2 + 1) dB, as this is
the increase in the power of the DCO-OFDM signal relative
to x0 (t). To demonstrate the effect of a moderate and large
bias and to present results in a way that is comparable with
the work of others [8], values of 7 dB and 13 dB are used in
this paper. Increasing the bias has two effects: it increases the
electrical power and it reduces the clipping noise. For high
levels of bias the clipping noise is negligible and the required
Eb(elec) /N0 for a given BER is approximately equal to the
Eb(elec) /N0 for a bipolar signal plus the bias level (in dB). For
larger constellations and lower levels of AWGN, the clipping
noise dominates and the BER graphs plateau.
IV. C OMPARISON OF ACO-OFDM AND DCO-OFDM
We now compare ACO-OFDM and DCO-OFDM in terms
of normalized bandwidth and the required Eb(opt) /N0 for a
BER of 10−3 . Although the optical bandwidth is virtually
unlimited, the bandwidth available in practice is limited by
Fig. 2. BER in AWGN versus Eb(elec) /N0 for DCO-OFDM with DC bias
of 7 dB and 13 dB using 4 QAM, 16 QAM, 64 QAM, and 256 QAM.
and/or of the electrical circuits. Following [9] we define
the bandwidth as the position of the first spectral null, and
normalize relative to OOK with the same data rate. For ACO-
OFDM and DCO-OFDM the first null occurs at a normalized
frequency of 1 + 2/N [7].
Fig. 3 shows simulation results for the required Eb(opt) /N0
for a BER of 10−3 and unity optical power versus the normal-
ized bandwidth per bit rate for ACO-OFDM and DCO-OFDM
with 7 dB and 13 dB bias and for 4 PPM and OOK. The
normalized bandwidth for DCO-OFDM is (1+2/N )/ log2 M ,
and for ACO-OFDM 2(1 + 2/N )/ log2 M where M is the
size of the QAM constellation. For each modulation scheme
the result for the largest constellation is at the left end of the
graph for that scheme. DCO-OFDM with 13 dB bias requires
the highest Eb(opt) /N0 but can also support the highest data
rate, although the required Eb(opt) /N0 is very large. Reducing
the bias to 7 dB reduces the required Eb(opt) /N0 for smaller
constellations but the increased clipping noise limits the con-
stellation size to 16 QAM because for larger constellations the
BER plateaus above the target BER of 10−3 . For normalized
ARMSTRONG and SCHMIDT: COMPARISON OF ASYMMETRICALLY CLIPPED OPTICAL OFDM AND DC-BIASED OPTICAL OFDM IN AWGN 345

25
DCO−OFDM, 13dB: 256, 64, 16, 4−QAM These theoretical results are consistent with the simulation
DCO−OFDM 7dB: 16, 4−QAM results shown in Fig. 3. For example, for ACO-OFDM with
20 OOK
ACO−OFDM: 1024, 256, 64, 16, 4−QAM
4 QAM, from Fig. 1, Ebelec,aco /N0 = 9.8 dB so the required
Ebopt,aco /N0 = 10 log10 (1/π) + 9.8 dB = −5 + 9.8 dB =
Normalized Eb(opt)/N0 (dB)

4−PPM
15
−4.8 dB. Other points in Fig. 3 are also consistent with the
10 theoretical results given by (4) and (5).

5 V. C ONCLUSIONS
0
−5
−10
0 0.5 1 1.5
Normalized Bandwidth/Bit Rate
Fig. 3. Eb(opt) /N0 for a BER of 10−3 and normalized optical power versus
normalized bandwidth for ACO-OFDM, DCO-OFDM, OOK and PPM.
bandwidths between 0.2 and 1, ACO-OFDM requires a lower
Eb(opt) /N0 than any other modulation scheme. ACO-OFDM
using 16 QAM has the same normalized bandwidth as DCO-
OFDM using 4 QAM but requires 4.7 dB less power than
DCO-OFDM with a 7 dB bias. Similarly ACO-OFDM with
256 QAM requires 0.56 dB less power than 16-QAM DCO-
OFDM. 4 PPM requires the lowest optical power but also
has the lowest bandwidth efficiency. For constellations greater
than 1024 QAM the ACO-OFDM curve would cross the DCO-
OFDM 13 dB bias curve but constellations this large are not
used in practice.
Theoretical results are now obtained. Within each modula-
tion scheme the required increase in Eb(opt) /N0 is equal to
the required Eb(elec) /N0 as the constellation size increases,
because the ratio of optical-to-electrical conversion is un-
changed if the absolute level of power is constant. However
the difference between modulation schemes depends on both
the difference in Eb(elec) /N0 and on the different relationships
between optical and electrical power.
For DCO-OFDM using Popt = E{x} and Pelec = E{x2 }
and k as defined in (3), and normalizing for unity optical
power, it can be shown using simple algebra that
Ebopt,dco k 2 Ebelec,dco
= . (4)
N0 1 + k2 N0
Similarly from the result
 in [10] which showed that for
ACO-OFDM Popt,aco = Pelec,aco /π , it follows that
Ebopt,aco 1 Ebelec,aco
= .
N0 π N0
We have presented simulation and theoretical results for
ACO-OFDM and DCO-OFDM with constellations from
4 QAM to 1024 QAM. As well as being a simple solution to
signal dispersion, ACO-OFDM has greater optical efficiency
than OOK. For a given normalized bandwidth ACO-OFDM
2 requires less power than DCO-OFDM for all but the largest
constellations. The performance of DCO-OFDM depends on
the bias. A large bias increases the required power, while a low
bias results in clipping noise which limits performance. For
ACO-OFDM the same design is optimum for all constellation
sizes, making ACO-OFDM better suited to adaptive systems.
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