Present analog optical fiber multi-channel video transmission systems are very sensitive to laser nonlinearities and are consequently limited in the optical modulation depth (OMD) that may be used. This, in turn limits the power budget achievable, signal-to-noise ratio, and the channel capacity. In this dissertation a new analog transmission technique for multi-channel TV transmission on fiber USIng frequency modulation/pulse amplitude modulation/time division multiplexing (FM/TDM) is described and compared with present digital and analog systems. Parameters for the proposed system are selected and the relationship between the performance and parameter values is discussed. Analysis and simulations indicate that the proposed system has a very low sensitivity to nonlinearities and is similar to that of digital systems, and much better than current Frequency Modulated/Frequency Division Multiplexed (FM/FDM) systems. This permits the use of higher OMD (as high as in digital systems), which results in achieving a high signal-to-noise ratio and a large power budget. Analysis of the number of channels as a function of adjacent channel intersymbol interference indicates that the proposed system has a better spectral efficiency than present analog systems. Simulations are also used to predict the performance of the proposed system with laser diodes poorer than the ones presently used for multi-channel analog systems. Considerably poorer lasers may be used while achieving acceptable transmission quality. Finally, carrier-to-noise penalty caused by timing errors and jitter effects are analyzed.

Ph. D.