Recently, there is an increasing interest in using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing schemes in advanced optical communication systems to compensate fiber dispersion. This article presents a comprehensive theoretical analysis to treat the optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing scheme as a special case of optical subcarrier multiplexing system. An analytical expression is derived to calculate the laser power required to achieve a specific level of signal-to-noise ratio, as a function of various system and noise parameters. Simulations show that the presence of laser relative intensity noise may cause a signal-to-noise ratio floor, where the bit error rate cannot be improved further even when the laser power increases dramatically.
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