Performance enhancement of 10 Gb/s direct modulation optical OFDM by external optical injection

We show experimentally and by simulation a performance enhancement of a directly modulated 10 Gb/s optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system due to external optical injection. The experiment is performed back to back and over 12 km of single mode fiber. The injection extends the range of linear operation of the laser and therefore extends the usable bandwidth for direct modulation formats which are susceptible to nonlinearity, such as OFDM. Nonlinearity in the system and its reduction due to injection are estimated by means of a two tone test. Additionally the performance enhancement on OFDM systems was verified in both simulation and experimentally by the comparisons of the average Bit Error Rate (BER) and Error Vector Magnitude (EVM).