Assessment of Optical System Performance Concerning Different Extinction Ratio Values

The low cost of high-speed transmission in Radio over Fiber (RoF) systems has attracted worldwide attention. By also adding Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM), also increases the system's ability to manage multi-channel data. In this paper, a 16x40 Gbps WDM RoF system is assessed, with various Extinction Ratio (ER) values considered. Six ER values from 5 to 30 dB were simulated using Optisystem. Results suggest that the relationship of the Q-Factor (QF) with ER is positive, while that of BER with ER is negative. However, an increase in ER beyond 20 dB produced diminishing benefits, likely because with such high ER values noise and distortion mechanisms become insignificant relative to signal quality improvements. The above also stresses the importance of the best intuitive form of the ER to make the system function in the easiest way possible.