IRACST International Journal of Advanced Computing, Engineering and Application (IJACEA), Vol. 1, No.

3, 2012

IMPLEMENTATION OF A RADIO-OVER-FIBER OFDM COMMUNICATION SYSTEM IN THE SIMULINK ENVIRONMENT.

Amr M. Mahros Faculty of Science Physics Department King Abdulaziz University Jeddah, Saudi Arabia 21432 E-mail: Amr.Mahros@mena.vt.edu
Abstract In order to meet the ever increasing demand for larger transmission bandwidth, wireless network based on radio-over-fiber technologies is a very beneficial solution. The IEEE 802.11a standards using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) can provide data rates up to 54 Mbps which makes good for high speed communications in wireless local area networks. In this paper, we evaluated the OFDM based PHY performance of IEEE 802.11a using various practical channel models such as Rayleigh multipath Fading and AWGN. The effects of different transmission modes define in PHY on IEEE 802.11a system performance are studied using SIMULINK environment. In addition, a simulation model for the optical link was proposed and a performance evaluation of radio over single mode fiber system using coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing is presented for the IEEE 802.11 standards. In this paper, the relation of fiber length with BER is discussed. Index Terms: OFDM; Radio-over-fiber; IEEE802.11a

Marwa M. Tharwat
Faculty of Engineering Electrical Engineering Department King Abdulaziz University Jeddah, Saudi Arabia 21432 E-mail: mmzahran1@kau.edu.sa It is the most suitable technology to realize these wireless network infrastructures and provides a low cost configuration, because the optical modulated signals are transmitted to the base station through fiber without significant loss and reach the mobile user via RF transmission allowing greater mobility. It provides functionally with simple BSs that are interconnected to a central site (CS) via an optical fibers. Figure 1 is a schematic diagram shows the concept of radio over fiber system. It includes an example of indoor wireless signal distribution. Recently, a worldwide convergence has occurred for the use of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) as an emerging technology for high data rates. In particular, many wireless standards (Wi-Max, IEEE802.11a, LTE, and DVB) have adopted the OFDM technology as a mean to increase dramatically future wireless communications [3]. OFDM is a particular form of Multicarrier transmission and is suited for frequency selective channels and high data rates. This technique transforms a frequency-selective wide-band channel into a group of nonselective narrowband channels, which makes it robust against large delay spreads by preserving orthogonality in the frequency domain. Moreover, the ingenious introduction of cyclic redundancy at the transmitter reduces the complexity to only FFT processing and one tap scalar equalization at the receiver.

I. INTRODUCTION Wireless coverage of the end-user domain, outdoors or indoors, e.g. in office buildings, universities, hospitals, airports, etc. is poised to become an essential part of broadband communication networks. In order to offer integrated broadband services (combining voice, data, video, multimedia services, and new value added services), these systems will need to offer higher data transmission capacities well beyond the present-day standards of wireless systems. Wireless LAN (IEEE802.11a/b/g) offering up-to 54 Mbps and operating at 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, and 3G mobile networks (IMT2000/UMTS) offering up-to 2 Mbps and operating around 2 GHz, are some of todays main wireless standards. IEEE802.16 or WiMAX is another recent standard aiming to bridge the last mile through mobile and fixed wireless access to the end user at frequencies between 2 66 GHz. WLANs need to continuous increase in capacity per unit area and that leads to operating frequencies (above 6 GHz) and smaller radio cells, especially in in-door applications where the high operating frequencies encounter tremendously high losses through the building walls. To overcome this problem and reduce the system installation and maintenance costs of such systems, it is imperative to make the radio antenna units as simple as possible. This may be achieved by the Radio over Fiber (RoF) technology [1, 2].

Figure 1. Radio over Fiber system Concept.

IRACST International Journal of Advanced Computing, Engineering and Application (IJACEA), Vol. 1, No. 3, 2012

The combination of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) and radio-over-fiber (RoF) systems (OFDM-RoF) has attracted considerable attention for future gigabit broadband wireless communication. The high peak to average power ratio (PAPR) and the nonlinear distortion of the optical transmitter are the main issues raised by OFDM and RoF systems, respectively. Optical transmission systems like fibers are growing in popularity because of their positive aspects: they can reach higher speeds and distances than other physical mediums and tend to be roughly constant in time, so they do not suffer relevant changes in their behavior. For this reason, optical networks have begun to experience widespread deployment offering higher data rates to users, and infrastructure and maintenance savings to operators. Optical fibers are an excellent medium for RF signal transmission due to the following characteristics: very high bandwidth, low loss, light weight, small cross section, low cost, and high flexibility. It has been widely considered for the delivery of radio signals to remote locations, and a great variety of system designs were investigated. Another important aspect of OFDM is the ability to adapt to the channel distortion thanks to the discrete multitone modulation. This kind of modulation allows a straight forward channel correction with simple-tap equalization, provided subchannels are made narrow enough to be able to correct every subchannel using a single coefficient. This paper presents a modeling and simulation of OFDM as a modulation technique for a ROF based WLAN system fully in based on IEEE 802.11a standard. The flexibility of this model is because fading parameters compared to only one in AWGN fading model, which helps to analyze the severity of fading more deeply and this model is versatile enough to represent fading. The performance is analyzed by MATLAB, using SIMULINK tool. The simulation model is designed as a platform upon which system transmission and optimization could be performed. The model has been developed in stages so as to minimize confusion, errors and ease of implementation. Furthermore a step by step approach allows skill sets pertaining to the model to be gradually developed. The organization of the paper includes a brief overview of an OFDM system, fiber model, laser diode and photo diode used in the ROF technique are discussed in Section II. Simulation results are then presented for typical IEEE 802.11a using practical channel models and using ROF technique models in Section III followed by the results and conclusions from our simulations under different scenarios, in Section IV. We conclude in Section V. II. OFDM-ROF SYSTEM MODEL The schematic model for OFDM-ROF system used in the paper is shown in Fig. 2. The basic and main building blocks of model are transmitter, optical link, channel and receiver. The model depicts the physical layer of IEEE 802.11a and classical optical link model for OFDM-ROF system used.

Figure 2. Schematic Model for OFDM-ROF Communication System.

The laser diode is modulated by the RF signal in the downlink path. The resulting intensity modulated an optical signal is then transmitted through the single mode fiber towards a photodiode. The received optical signal is converted to RF signal by direct detection through a PIN photodetector. The signal is then amplified and radiated by the antenna. A. OFDM SYSTEM As it is shown in Fig. 3, data bits at the transmitter are first encoded then converted into a constellation map of a known modulation scheme such as BPSK or QAM. This data is interpreted as a frequency-domain data in an OFDM system and is subsequently converted to a time-domain signal by an IFFT operation. The output of the IFFT is transmitted to the channel after the addition of cyclic prefix (CP) and zero pads. Then the OFDM time signals are transformed to the appropriate analog form by D/A converter and modulate the laser diode creating an optical signal pass through the optical link and finally transmitted in wireless channel. The reverse process is done at the receiver of an OFDM system. After the CP the received signal is converted to frequency domain by an FFT operation. The channel estimator and channel compensation blocks are used to characterize the fluctuating noisy channel of power line and hence improve the Symbol Error Rate (SER). The convolution code has been used [4, 5]. B. LASER DIODE In general, a laser-diode shows a non-linear behavior with memory which is called weak non-linearity. When it is driven well above its threshold current, its characteristics can be modeled by a Volterra series of order 3. When the kernels of the Volterra series are taken as Dirac Delta functions, then the system is modeled without memory. The limiting factors of a direct modulated laser are its modulation bandwidth, extinction ratio, chirp and linearity, but for baseband data modulation these parameters do not greatly affect the performance in a typical RoF link. Output optical power versus electric current can be written as: (1) where I is input current of the microwave signal including the dc bias, Ith is diode threshold current, f is frequency in hertz, h is Planck constant, e is charge of an electron, and L is laser quantum efficiency.

IRACST International Journal of Advanced Computing, Engineering and Application (IJACEA), Vol. 1, No. 3, 2012

For the nonlinear case the input-output relationship is assumed to be (2) where a, b, c, and d are constants [6]. C. OPTICAL FIBER In current telecommunication networks optical fiber is the main medium of communication. In RoF links, both single mode and multimode fibers are used depending on the application. The main advantage of optical fiber is its low loss, but there are several limiting factors. If the fiber used is a single mode fiber, the optical signal can undergo a certain number of distortions due to the properties of the material in which fiber is made up and its geometry. The effects on the optical signal can be divided in two classes. Linear effects that include attenuation, chromatic dispersion and non-linear effects that include Brillion diffusion, Raman diffusion, and fluctuations of the refraction index are the two classes. The impact of such effects on the signal depends primarily on the operation conditions (wavelength, input optical power, length of the fiber, conditions of manufacture and fiber environment). Naturally a perfect model taking all factors into account is complicated to the point of impracticality, especially given the time frame of application and the computer systems running this simulator. Analysis of various research papers and articles led to the adoption of the split step model Analysis of various research papers and articles led to the adoption of the split step model [7]. This method aims to consider the major effects of fiber propagation in a way that is, comparatively simpler than more precise models. The different optical fiber effects were modeled over a length of the optical fiber by splitting the optical fiber into numerous small sections in the split step model. Each section acts independently with regards to the different fiber effects and can be modeled by a number of digital filters in Matlab. The non-linear effects can be represented by N the non-linear parameter that acts as a multiplier value dependant on the injected laser power and defined by the following equation (2) where n2 depicts the non-linear index coefficient, represents the operating wavelength, Aeff is the effective area of the fiber, and LD is the dispersion length. It has been found that the split step model allows only the change of dispersion parameters by cascading or removing the digital filter blocks, hence limiting the simulations to single mode fiber as the change dispersion parameters causes the variation in length, dispersion, frequency or wavelength to dictate a cumbersome fluctuation in the number of digital filters utilized. The final mathematical representation of the single mode fiber transfer function can be expressed as (3) where D() represents the dispersion at the operating wavelength, represents the operating wavelength, L

represents the length of the fiber, and f represents the frequency of the optical carrier and its sidebands. D. PHOTODIODE The detection of the received optical signal is performed primarily by the photo detector. In most cases, the received optical signal is quite weak and thus electronic amplification circuitry is used, following the photodiode, to ensure that an optimized power signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is achieved which could be calculated as follows (4) where Isig represent the photoelectric current and is the mean squared noise contributions from the photodiode. The PIN photodiode and receiver total noise are calculated and superimposed over the ideal photodiode signal current. To evaluate the effect of noise added during the amplification process, a mathematical model explained in [7] has been used. The noise in photodiode includes the quantum shot noise, the photodiode dark current noise, and the thermal (Johnson) noise. It has been demonstrated that both the shot noise and dark current noise, contributions from the bulk material, follow a Poisson process. For that reason the mean squared of these noise source are considered in calculations. The noise sources can be expressed mathematically as follows:

(5)

where Idk is assumed to be the average dark current, kB is Boltzman constant, T is absolute temperature, R is the photodiode load resistor, and B represent the photodiode 3dB bandwidth [7]. E. TYPICAL WIRELESS LAN SYSTEM (IEEE 802.11A) The IEEE 802.11a standard is proposed for a range of data rates from 6 up to 54 Mbps using the OFDM modulation technique in the 5 GHz band. The 5 GHz band is specifically designed for Wireless broad-band Mobile communication systems. The IEEE 802.11a WLAN standard is superior compared with current technologies because of its greater scalability, better interference immunity and significantly higher speed, and at the same time allowing for higher bandwidth applications and more users. The 802.11a standard utilizes 300 MHz of bandwidth in the 5 GHz unlicensed national information infrastructure band [8, 9]. III. SIMULINK MODEL To study the feasibility of OFDM signal transmission through a single mode fiber, the simulation was carried out

IRACST International Journal of Advanced Computing, Engineering and Application (IJACEA), Vol. 1, No. 3, 2012
COFDM Trans m itter Cons tellation Before and After Channel Es tim ation OFDM Bas eband Modulator and Add Cyclic Prefix Training Ins ertion ConBefore Las er Diode

Training Bernoulli Binary Convolutional Encoder QAM Mapping

P/S Single Mode Fiber

ConAfter Optical Link End-to-End Power Spectrum Sim ulation Tim e SER Calculation SER Error Sym bol Total Sym bol SER Calculation SER Error Sym bol Total Sym bol 12:34 Multipath Channel and AWGN Multipath Rayleigh Fading Photo Diode Tx_S B-FFT Rx_S B-FFT End-to-End Tim e Scope AWGN COFDM Receiver OFDM Bas eband Dem odulator and Rem ove Cyclic Prefix Tx_R Tx_I Viterbi Decoder QAM Dem apping Rem ove Zero Channel Com pens ation Training Separation S/P Rx_R Rx_I

Channel Es tim ator

Figure 3. Complete MATLAB SIMULINK model of IEEE 802.11a optical OFDM system.

using a SIMULINK model. The simulation model, shown in Fig. 3, consisted of the 802.11a OFDM based physical link end-to-end and an optical link. The laser diode is modeled using Equation (2), the SMF channel is modeled using equations (3) and (4), and the photodiode is modeled using equations (4) and (5). The parameters and configurations of IEEE 802.11a physical layer that are used for the simulation are listed in Table I while that of the optical link are listed in Table II.
TABLE I SIMULATION PARAMETERS AND CONFIGURATIONS OF IEEE802.11A Parameter/Configuration Channel bandwidth Cyclic prefix factor Forward error correcting code Modulation schemes OFDM Channel Fading Data Symbol duration Total symbol duration Channel Fading Value 20 MHz 1/4 Convolutional BPSK and 16 QAM 52 sub carriers, 4 pilots, and 64 point FFT AWGN Rayleigh 3.2 s 4 s AWGN Rayleigh

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS The results shown in Fig. 4 depict the performance of PSK modulation using OFDM in the 802.11a physical model and that of the OFDM-ROF Communication System. The number of subcarrier is 64, the data rate is 6 Mbps, and fiber length is 8 km. The results obtained show the bit error rate performance of IEEE 802.11a wireless system almost has no detritions with the optical link. On the other hand, it will meet the ever increasing demand for larger transmission bandwidth. The effect of fiber length on system performance is investigated and the results are presented in Fig. 5 with 64 COFDM subcarrier spaced equally by 0.3 MHz with and equivalent data rate 6 Mbps and modulated by BPSK.
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OFDM based PHY performance of IEEE 802.11a over fiber

With optical link Without optical link

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TABLE II SIMULATION PARAMETERS AND CONFIGURATIONS OF THE OPTICAL LINK Parameter/Configuration Laser diode bias current Laser diode threshold current Laser diode nonlinear relation constants [ a b c d ] SMF-28 length SMF-28 wavelength SMF-28 dispersion SMF-28 effective area SMF-28 attenuation level Photo diode dark current Photo diode load resistor Photo diode total normalized mean squared noise Photo diode amplification Photo diode noise gain Value 25.5 mA 19.5 mA [0.0045 0.32 147.05 12033] 80 km 1.55 m 17 ps/nm km 5.2811011 m2 0.2 dB/km 25 nA 50 4.44104 33 dB 11 % of maximum current

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Figure 4. IEEE 802.11a optical OFDM system system performance.

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OFDM based PHY performance of IEEE 802.11a over fiber

8 km 1 km 12 km 15 km

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Figure 5. IEEE 802.11a optical OFDM system system performance with different fiber length.

IRACST International Journal of Advanced Computing, Engineering and Application (IJACEA), Vol. 1, No. 3, 2012

Figure 5 indicates that there is no significant degradation on the bit error rate performance until the fiber length becomes 12 km due to considerable OFDM modal dispersion. This means that for OFDM-ROF system used supports ensures high service availability over long distances up to 8 km which came in accordance with standard distances between the indoor (baseband) and outdoor (radio) units. V. CONCLUSION Implementation of a radio-over-fiber OFDM communication system is the primary goal for this work. The OFDM signal is generated and converted into optical signal using a laser diode block. Then the optical signal is sent through the fiber channel block to the receiver block. The received optical signal is converted into OFDM signal using a photo detector block. All communication blocks are designed and simulated using SIMULINK tool in MATLAB. The behavior OFDM with different modulation formats is simulated and analyzed. The bit error rate performance is analyzed by comparing the input and output signal for different fiber length. SIMULINK based simulation provides the reference for the final design. REFERENCES
[1] A. Chahine, U. Okonkwo and R.i Ngah, OFDM modulation study for a radio-over-fiber system for wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11a), 2008 IEEE Internatnational RFM conference proceeding, Malaysia, pp. 335 - 338. G. Singh and A. Alphones, OFDM modulation study for a radioover-fiber system for wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11a), 2003 IEEE Internatnational ICICS-PCM conference proceeding, Singapore, pp. 1460 - 1464 vol.3. S. Dutta and D. Padha, Performance evalutaion simulation of IEEE 802.11a OFDM using indoor environmental channel models, IETE Journal of Research, pp. 64 70, vol. 57, Issue 1, Feb. 2011. G. Singh and A. Alphones, OFDM modulation study for a radioover-fiber system for wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11a), 2003 IEEE Internatnational ICICS-PCM conference proceeding, Singapore, pp. 1460 - 1464 vol.3. A. M. Mahros, I. Elzahaby, M. M. Tharwat, and S. Elnoubi, Beamforming Processing for OFDM Communication Systems, Innovations in Communication Theory, INCT 2012. G. Baghersalimi, V. Postoyalko, and T. Farrell, Modelling LaserDiode Non-linearity in a Radio-over- Fibre Link, 2003 Proceeding of London Communication Symposium , pp. 321- 324. M. Rahman, J. Lee, Y. Park, and K. Kim, Radio over Fiber as a Cost Effective Technology for Transmission of WiMAX Signals, World Academy of Science and Technology, pp. 424-428, vol. 56, 2009. N. Giradkar, G. Asutkar, and A. Maidamwar, OFDM based PHY Performance of IEEE 802.11a Using Various practical channel models, International Journal of Soft Computing and Engineering (IJSCE), pp. 2231-2307, vol. 1, Issue 4, Sep. 2011. S. Mahajan and N. Kumar, Simulative Analysis of Influence of Modulation Techniques on COFDM based Radio over Fiber Transmission, International Journal of Modern Education and Computer Science, pp. 1 8, vol. 8, Aug. 2012.

AUTHORS PROFILE

[2]

[3]

[4]

Amr M. Mahros was born on February 4th, 1976 in Alexandria, Egypt. He began his study of engineering in 1993 at the Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University (AU) Egypt. In 1998, he obtained his Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) degree in Communication & Electro-physics Engineering where he was ranked the first in his class. Upon graduation he served in the Egyptian army force for fourteen months. In 1999, he joined the Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University as a faculty member at Mathematics and Engineering Physics Department. In 2000, he pursued his graduate studies at the Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. In 2004, he earned his Master of Science (M.Sc.) degree in engineering physics. The title of his master thesis was Crack Propagation in Unidirectional Fiber Laminated Composites. In January 2006, he joined North Carolina State University (NCSU) to pursue his graduate studies under the supervision of Dr. S. M. Bedair leading to his Doctor of Philosophy degree in engineering physics under scientific channel program. During his studies at North Carolina State University, he was an active member of the Egyptian Student Association in North America (ESANA) which overlooks the graduate Egyptian Students in USA and Canada. In January 2007, he was elected as the treasurer of ESANA and in January 2008, he was elected as the social officer. In addition, he is a member of several professional organization and honor societies. In July 2008, Amr returned to Alexandria University, Egypt to pursue his PhD. In July 2009, he joined the Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University as assistant professor at Mathematics and Engineering Physics Department. In January 2013, he joined the Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University as assistant professor at Physics Department. Marwa M. Tharwat was born on June 7th, 1978 in Alexandria, Egypt. She received his PhD. Degree in Electrical Engineering from Alexandria University, Egypt in 2009. Presently she is working as an Assistant Professor at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia since September 2012. Her field of specialization includes Digital & wireless communication, Cognitive Radio Networks, Radio over fiber etc.

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]