See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/228821152

Analysis of System Performance for an Optical CDMA System Implemented

with Synchronous Receiver

Article  in  Journal of the Chinese Institute of Engineers · September 2009

DOI: 10.1080/02533839.2009.9671569

CITATION READS

1 60

10 authors, including:

Le-Pong Chin Yang-Han Lee

Shih Chien University Tamkang University
15 PUBLICATIONS   67 CITATIONS    254 PUBLICATIONS   1,018 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Yih Jan
Tamkang University
29 PUBLICATIONS   146 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Yang-Han Lee on 31 May 2014.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Journal of the Chinese Institute of Engineers, Vol. 32, No. 6, pp. 861-866 (2009) 861

ANALYSIS OF SYSTEM PERFORMANCE FOR AN OPTICAL

CDMA SYSTEM IMPLEMENTED WITH SYNCHRONOUS
RECEIVER

Ming-Hsueh Chuang, Hsien-Wei Tseng, Le-Pond Chin, Liang-Lin Jau, Yang-Han Lee,* and
Yih-Guang Jan

ABSTRACT
In this paper, we study and analyze the system performance of an optical code-
division multiplex access (CDMA) system implemented with synchronous receiver.
In the traditional optical CDMA access system, optical signals emitted from users are
transmitted at the same power level. When these signals arrive at the receiver terminal,
due to different distances traveled for each signal from the transmitter to the receiver,
they will be at different power levels. In this paper we propose a mechanism to esti-
mate first the distance between a transmitter and a receiver and then from this dis-
tance information to estimate its associated time delay so as to shift the signal time
frame structure and adjust its transmitting power level so that a synchronous receiv-
ing system is generated. Using the VPItransmissionMaker software the system per-
formance of the proposed system is simulated, and the results show that the proposed
synchronous receiving system gives better performance than a traditional synchro-
nous transmitting system.

Key Words: optical code-division multiple access, balanced encoding, coupler.

I. INTRODUCTION function as alternative broadband networks (Jau and

Code-division multiple access (CDMA) technol-
ogy has been widely adopted for wireless communi-
cation applications, especially, due to its inherent
characteristics of large capacity, anti-interference and
privacy/security capability, it has been applied in
many mobile communication systems. Also since the
1980s, CDMA technology has been implemented in
fiber optical communications (Prucnal et al., 1986a;
Salehi, 1989) and the resulting implemented systems
*Corresponding author. (Tel: 886-2-2625-2303; Fax: 886-2-
2635-2303;Email:yhlee@ee.tku.edu.tw)
M. H. Chuang, H. W. Tseng, Y. H. Lee and Y. G. Jan are with
the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tamkang University,
Tamsui, Taipei 25137, Taiwan, R.O.C.
L. P. Chin is with the Department of Information Technology
and Management, Shih Chien University, Taipei 10479, Taiwan,
R.O.C.
L. L. Jau is with the Department of Computer & Communica-
tion Engineering, St. John’s University, Tamsui, Taipei 25137,
Taiwan, R.O.C.
Lee, 2004a) with dramatic increment of capacity
through the increase in the system implementation
complexity (Weng and Wu, 2001).
The design of a traditional optical CDMA sys-
tem is usually based on the assumption that every user
has the same receiving power (Jau and Lee, 2004b;
Jau and Lee, 2003a; Jau and Lee, 2003b; Prucnal et
al., 1986b) and also that the synchronous system is
maintained when the signal is transmitted through the
system. Unfortunately, as seen from Fig. 4, the re-
ceiving power level of every transmitted signal at the
receiver terminal is not the same. The power level at
the receiver depends on how far it is from the cou-
pler and due to this distance difference the signal ar-
rival times at the receiver terminal will also be
different. More specifically in the design of a signal
frame structure for a traditional synchronous trans-
mitting system, users’ receiving power is assumed to
be equal. This assumption consequently implies that
the components of interfering energy among uses are
at the same level. However, as seen from Fig. 4 with
862 Journal of the Chinese Institute of Engineers, Vol. 32, No. 6 (2009)

bit Table 1 Code word combinations with p = 3

Data bits Group Code sequences
100 100 100 b = 1 for User 1
0 010 010 010 b = 1 for User 2
Encoded output
001 001 001 b = 0 for User 1 &User 2
Encoded by c1 Encoded by c0 100 010 001 b = 1 for User 3
1 010 001 100 b = 1 for User 4
Fig. 1 Principle of balanced encoder 001 100 010 b = 0 for User 3 &User 4
100 001 010 b = 1 for User 5
2 010 100 001 b = 1 for User 6
six users, and if we make modifications in the frame 001 010 100 b = 0 for User 5 &User 6
structure to take into consideration possible variations
in of receiving power levels to reflect the fact of us-
ers’ distance differences from the coupler, the sys-
tem performance will be improved. The design of Optical encoder
this new frame structure will be developed in this for b = 0
Input 2×1 Encoded
paper and its resulting system performance will be data Coupler optical signal
analyzed and simulated to demonstrate its effective- Optical encoder
ness and the improvement in system performance due for b = 1
to the new system design.
Fig. 2 Block diagram of spread spectrum balanced encoding sys-
II. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE OF BALANCED tem
CODING

1. Balanced Encoder MUI

Tb estimator

The principle of generating a balanced encoder

is described in Fig. 1. Each bit, 0 or 1, is sliced into
multiple units called chips which are encoded and
transmitted by utilizing spread spectrum technology.
For example, as presented in Table 1, with the prime
number p = 3 used, there are totally nine possible
spreading codes generated. The assignment of these
nine spreading codes for users can be explained in
the following. Three groups will be formed and two
users will be allocated to each group. In each group
there are three spreading codes, in which one code is
used as a common code for the bit “0” and the other
two codes are for data bit “1”, one code for each user
in the group when it has a bit “1” to transmit. Due to
this data encoding the users in the same group will
not interfere with each other. After subtracting three
common codes from the total nine codes there are has
left six codes to generate the bit “1” and therefore in
this situation the system can support six users
transmitting.
Figure 2 shows the architecture of a balanced
encoder. When a data bit b = 0 is generated, a shared
prime code is encoded from the upper branch, when
the data bit is b = 1, a shared prime code is encoded
from the lower branch. From this implementation it
is implicitly realized that no matter what the data bit
is, 0 or 1, the weight of the transmitting spread code
is kept constant and consequently the interference
level is also kept constant.
Received
optical signal
Optical
correlator
Photo-
detector ∫T c 1 Decoded
>θ output
<
0
Fig. 3 Block diagram of balanced-encoded receiver
2. Decoder
The receiver has the functional block as shown
in Fig. 3. In the first sub-block it uses a correlator to
distinguish different users. It is then the propose the
second sub-block to convert the optical signal into
an electrical signal. Before determining the thresh-
old level of the detection current, the system is
switched to multi-user interference (MUI) mode to
estimate the possible number of users before trans-
mitting each user’s signal frame.
III. SYNCHRONOUS OCDMA RECEIVER
In a practical system, several users are connected
to a star coupler as shown in Fig. 4(a). Distance be-
tween a user and the coupler is different for each user.
Therefore, each user’s frame will have a different
arrival time which makes it difficult to estimate the
interference among multiple users at the receiver. In
this paper, a synchronous receiving scheme is pro-
posed to first measure the distance between a user
 M. H. Chuang et al.: An Optical CDMA System Implemented with Synchronous Receiver 863

User 1
User 5
on. Every user starts its transmission after being de-
layed by its associated delay time so as to align the
User 2
1 Km
5 Km receiving times for all users, as shown in Fig. 4(b).
2 Km We use user 1 and user 6 as examples in the fol-
Coupler
4 Km
User 4 lowing discussion to depict their transmissions. The
6 Km group velocity in this media, V, can be calculated from
3 Km
User 6 Eq. (1). In Eq. (1), n designates the refraction index
User 3
(e.g. it is 1.4795, the optimal measured refraction in-
dex value for a laser with wavelength 1310 nm), c is
the light speed (3 × 10 8 m/sec). The signal transmis-
(a) sion time can be obtained from Eq. (2). In Eq. (2), D
is the distance between a receiver and the coupler. In
Td1 Tt1
User 1 this example, the transmission time for user 1 is 4.93
User 2
Td2 Tt2 µs and for user 6 it is 29.58 µs. We can then obtain
Td3 Tt3
User 3 Coupler the time difference or time shift between users 1 and
User 4
Td4 Tt4
6 as 24.65 µs by the calculation of 29.58 µs – 4.93 µs
User 5
Td5 Tt5
= 24.65 µs. The transmission time for user 1 is de-
User 6
Tt6
layed by 24.65 µs so as to align its reception with
user 6. From a power consumption point of view and
through simulation, there is about 0.2 dB power loss
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 (µs)
for a signal transmitted 1 kilometer in an optical fiber.
(b)
The power loss for an optical signal transmitted a dis-
Fig. 4 (a) Illustration of users connecting to a start coupler; tance of 6 kilometers is about 1.2 dB.
(b) Illustration of various users arrival times
2. Frame Format

and the coupler before signal detection. The mea- The signal frame structure is modified by tak-
sured distance for each user will then be used to ad- ing into consideration a user’s signal arrival time and
just its time reference so as to align the transmissions his signal’s power level at the receiver so as to im-
among the transfers to synchronize the received sig- prove the system performance of the designed opti-
nals and to enhance the calculation and estimation of cal CDMA system. The frame structures of traditional
the interference among multiple users. systems and the one we propose are compared and
the system performances are simulated to identify the
1. Synchronization Design for Synchronous Re- possible system performance improvement due to this
ceiver frame structure modification.

As plotted in Fig. 4(a), the distance between a (i) Traditional Frame Format
transmitter and the coupler is different for each user,
therefore, the time involved in transmitting a signal In order to easily demonstrate the system archi-
from a transmitter to the coupler has to be estimated. tecture of our proposed system we assume, as shown
For example, the transmission time for user 1 is T t1 in Fig. 5(a), it has four users in the system and all
while the transmission time for user 6 is T t6 . The users are transmitting their signals at the same instant
group velocity, V, in a medium with refraction index of time, thus, the users’ frames will arrive at the cou-
n is pler at different times. This scheme is also called a
synchronous transmitting scheme. The frame we con-
V = nc , (1) sider is accommodating the following three blocks:

where c is the light velocity (3 × 10 8 m/sec). (a) Preamble: In this block, all preamble entry is
Then the transmission time can be calculated as indicated by 0. The block length should be long
enough to make sure that every 0 bit is received
Transmission time = D , (2) by all receivers and consequently all interfer-
V
ing signals are received and measured during
where D is the signal transmitting distance. the transmission period from t E to t D.
We take every user’s transmission time into ac- (b) Data: This block includes the user’s data set and
count by setting it as a delay interval, e.g. the delay its associated header. In order to distinguish
interval is Tt1 for user 1, and it is Tt2 for user 2 and so the preamble bits (indicated by all 0s) from the
864 Journal of the Chinese Institute of Engineers, Vol. 32, No. 6 (2009)

Table 2 Link parameters

Name Symbol Value
Wavelength λ 1300 nm
APD quantum efficiency η 0.6
APD gain G 100
APD bulk leakage current Ib 0.1 nA
APD surface leakage current Is 10 nA
APD effective ionization ratio k eff 0.02
Chip duration Tc 0.1 ns
Receiver noise temperature Tr 300 K
Receiver load resistance RL 1000 Ω

W0
0 ................. 00000000 1 data 0 ................. 00000000
0 ................. 00000000 1 data 0 ................. 00000000
0 ................. 00000000 1 data 0 ................. 00000000
0 ................. 00000000 1 data 0 ................. 00000000 t
tT tN
tE tD

TFRM

(a)

W0 W1

0 ... 00000 1 ... 11111 data 0 ... 00000

0 ... 00000 1 ... 11111 data 0 ... 00000
0 ... 00000 1 ... 11111 data 0 ... 00000
0 ... 00000 1 ... 11111 data 0 ... 00000
t

tE tD tS tN

TFRM
(b)

Fig. 5 (a) Frame format for synchronous transmitting scheme; (b) Frame format for synchronous receiving scheme

data set header, the header bit is indicated by 1
to indicate the start of a data block.
(c) Padding: In order to keep the interference at a
constant level, the 0 bit should be continuously
transmitted until the end of the transmission
period. Every frame length will be fixed,
therefore, the padding length is (tN – tT) seconds.
(ii) Proposed Frame Format
The main difference between our proposed
frame format and the traditional one is that the time
delay for each user has to be calculated from esti-
mating the distance between the user and the coupler.
As illustrated in Fig. 5(b), the bit 0 with length of W0
and the bit 1 with length W 1 have been inserted into
the preamble block to estimate the mutual interfer-
ence between users. The precision of the estimation
can be improved by sufficiently increasing the lengths
of the block W 0 and/or the block W 1. The scheme is
called a synchronous receiving frame.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS AND
DISCUSSIONS
The parameters, such as the number of users,
user’s distance from the coupler, user’s transmission
power level, detection current at the receiver, and the
frame format etc., considered in the last section will
be adopted as the parameters to be considered in our
simulation for system performance evaluation. The
relevant parameters used in the simulation are listed
in Table 2. The system performance such as the re-
sulting system bit error rate with schemes of synchronous
transmitting and synchronous receiving is considered
and compared.
 M. H. Chuang et al.: An Optical CDMA System Implemented with Synchronous Receiver 865

I bias

Encoder for bit 1

Laser
Pseudo External 1×3 3×1
random NRZ
pattern modulator Splitter Combiner
I bias

-1
RZ 2×1
Laser Combiner

External 1×3 3×1

modulator Splitter Combiner

RZ Encoder for bit 0

(a)

Correlator Clock
recovery

1×3 3×1 Sampler Level

Splitter Combiner APD TIA and conditioning
thresholder

(b)

Fig. 6 (a) OCDMA transmitter architecture; (b) OCDMA receiver architecture

1. Simulation Architecture
The functional block diagrams for simulation
test are shown in Fig. 6(a). The driving current for
the laser diode is 60 mA with its operating wavelength
set at 1552.52 nm. Amplitude modulation is consid-
ered as the external modulation scheme. In the input
part, the pseudo random code with non-return-to zero
(NRZ) format generated from the pseudo random
number generator should be trans-coded to return-to-
zero (RZ) format and then be inserted into the exter-
nal modulators. A data bit is inserted into the laser
diode and emitted into the external modulator. The
spread codes are generated in the delay lines and out-
put at the transmitter output.
The receiver has architecture as shown in Fig.
6(b). The received spreading code is decoded by us-
ing delay lines. This decoded optical signal is then
transformed into an electrical signal by passing it
through the APD detector. The detector output sig-
nal is then sampled to generate the threshold current,
and this threshold current is used to distinguish its
original signal among many received signals.
2. Threshold Current
Every frame structure has its distinguishing thresh-
old current. In the synchronous transmitting scheme,
with frame format as plotted in Fig. 5(a), the receiver
threshold current is estimated from the resultant sig-
nal level of ten “0” signals during the period from t E
to t D. This resulting operation is identified by W 0 =
10.
In the synchronous receiving scheme, with frame
format as plotted in Fig. 5(b), the receiver threshold
current is estimated from the resultant signal level of
ten “1” signals transmitted during the period of t D to
t S in addition to the ten “0” signals transmitted dur-
ing the period of t E to t D. This resulting operation is
identified by W 0 = W 1 = 10.
3. BER vs. Power
The bit error rate (BER) is simulated and the
key performance indicator for the evaluation of the
system performance. The resulting BERs of user 1
(the shortest distance between transmitter and coupler)
and user 6 (the longest distance between transmitter
and coupler) for various frame structures are used for
system performance comparison. In Fig. 7, the rela-
tion of receiving power level versus BER is plotted.
It is evident that the BER of the synchronous receiv-
ing scheme is better than that of the synchronous trans-
mitting scheme under the same receiving power level.
In the synchronous receiver scheme, the BERs for both
user 1 and user 6 are between 10 –2 to 10 –4 when the
 866 Journal of the Chinese Institute of Engineers, Vol. 32, No. 6 (2009)
10–2
10–4
10–6
BER
10–8
10–10 W0 = 10 @ User 1
W0 = 10 @ User 6
W0 = 10, W1 = 10 @ User 1
10–12 W0 = 10, W1 = 10 @ User 6
2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4
Receiver power (µW)
Fig. 7 BER vs. Power
receiving power is 2.8 µW. From the plot for user 1,
BER decreases dramatically when its receiving power
is increased. Once its receiving power reaches 3.6
µW, it has BER far below 10 –12, while for the syn-
chronous transmitting scheme its BER stays at 10 –6.
V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper we propose a new scheme, namely
a synchronous receiving scheme for optical CDMA
systems, to improve the key system performance
indicator, BER. The improvement in the system per-
formance is demonstrated through extensive simula-
tions. From these results, it appears that, for all users
at different serving ranges the synchronous receiving
system has a lower decoding error rate than that of the
synchronous transmitting system. And in considering
receiving power levels there is quite a wide range in
the receiving power levels for users at different serv-
ing distances; however the MUI in the system designed
based on synchronous receiving still holds constant
and therefore its threshold level, used in the detection
process, is comparatively stable compared with other
system design schemes.
We are currently studying the following tasks:
1. Analyze the relationship between the lengths of W0
and W 1 and the precision of the threshold current
and then develop an algorithm for finding the op-
timal lengths for W 0 and W 1 so as to optimize the
system performance.
2. Analyze the beat noise effect when we use the ex-
tra W 1 bits in our proposed system compared to
the conventional synchronous transmitting scheme
without using the W 1 bits.
We are confident that when these tasks are fully
implemented or developed the system performance
will be further improved for our newly designed op-
tical CDMA system.
View publication stats
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by the National Sci-
ence Council, R.O.C., providing financial support
under Contract NSC 97-2221-E-032-002-MY2, NSC
97-2221-E-032-027-MY3 and funding from Tamkang
University for the University-Department joint re-
search project.
REFERENCES
3.6 Jau, L.-L., and Lee, Y.-H., 2004a, “Optical Code-di-
vision Multiplexing Systems Using Manchester
Coded Walsh Codes,” Institution of Electrical
Engineers Proceedings, Optoelectronics, Vol.
151, Issue 2, pp. 81-86.
Jau, L.-L., and Lee, Y.-H., 2004b, “A Synchronous
Optical CDMA System with Constant Multi-user
Interference,” Proceedings of the 2004 National
Symposium on Telecommunications (NST 2004),
Keelung, Taiwan, ROC, pp.120-125.
Jau, L.-L., and Lee, Y.-H., 2003a, “Optical Code-Di-
vision Multiplexing Systems Using Common Zero
Codes,” Microwave and Optical Technology
Letter, Vol. 39-2, No. 2, pp. 165-167.
Jau, L.-L., and Lee, Y.-H., 2003b, “Synchronous
Optical-CDMA Systems Using Tunable Hard
Limiters,” Journal of Optical Communication,
Vol. 24, No. 6, pp. 217-222.
Prucnal, P. R., Santoro, M. A., and Fan, T. R., 1986a,
“Spread Spectrum Fiber-optic Local Area Net-
work Using Optical Processing,” Journal of
Lightwave Technology, Vol. LT-4, No. 5, pp. 547-
554.
Prucnal, P. R., Santoro, M. A., and Sehgal, S. K.,
1986b, “Ultrafast All-Optical Synchronous Mul-
tiple Access Fiber Networks,” Institute of Elec-
trical and Electronics Engineers Journal on
Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. SAC-4,
Issue 9, pp. 1484-1492.
Salehi, J. A., 1989, “Code Division Multiple-Access
Techniques in Optical Fiber Networks –Part I:
Fundamental Principles,” Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers Transactions on Com-
munications, Vol. 37, Issue 8, pp. 824-833.
Weng, C.-S., and Wu, J., 2001, “Perfect Difference
Codes for Synchronous Fiber-Optic CDMA Com-
munication Systems,” Journal of Lightwave
Technology, Vol. 19, Issue 2. pp. 186-194.
Manuscript Received: Mar. 27, 2008
Revision Received: Dec. 23, 2008
and Accepted: Jan. 23, 2009