2016 Progress In Electromagnetic Research Symposium (PIERS), Shanghai, China, 8–11 August

A Novel Analog Broadband RF Predistortion Circuit in Directly

Modulated Lasers for Radio-over-fiber Systems
Chen Fan, Zhigong Wang, and Xuenong Tian
Institute of RF- & OE-ICs, Southeast University, Sipailou 2, Nanjing 210096, China

Abstract— For radio-over-fiber (RoF) systems, the laser is a major source of nonlinearity. A
CMOS analog broadband RF predistortion circuit to improve the nonlinearity in RoF systems
is firstly described in this letter. It is shown by simulation that the predistortion circuit shows a
significant reduction of about 20 dBc in the third-order intermodulation distortion (IMD3) in the
optical fiber system over the frequency range of 1∼2 GHz. The predistortion lineariser is being
fabricated using the TSMC 0.18-µm CMOS technology.

1. INTRODUCTION
In past two decades, the wireless communication technology is developing at an unprecedented
speed. ROF (radio over fiber) is a kind of information transmission technology and the radio
signal is modulated onto an optical carrier either at the carrier frequency or at the intermediate
frequency. The ROF technology has the advantages of stable information channel, low loss, high
bandwidth, immunization to the electromagnetic interference, less weight, and easy to maintenance.
It is widely used in the field of mobile communication, radio astronomy, shipboard communication,
and has great impact on the development of these fields. To enable applications in multi-operators
environment, stringent constraints on system linearity have to be met on a large band ranging.
However, because of the impact of the nonlinear, the application of the systems is severely restricted.
It becomes very important to improve the nonlinearity of ROF systems.
In a practical ROF system, there are two modulation types, namely direct-modulation and ex-
ternal modulation. For the direct-modulation the laser diode is driven directly by the RF signal,
and for the external modulation a light source and electro-optical modulator are used. However,
the former becomes inefficient over 10 GHz, mainly because of the laser relaxation frequency and
chirping, combined with the fiber chromatic dispersion. The latter can operate at very high fre-
quency, but due to the intrinsic nonlinearity of the modulators, it has a higher distortion level.
For commercial applications, the direct modulation of semiconductor lasers is a more mature and
diffused technology.
A common problem of the optical transmission is the link nonlinearity, especially the laser
diode nonlinearity. When many RF subcarriers are multiplexed together and used to modulate a
laser diode, harmonic distortions and intermodulation products are generated because of the laser
diode nonlinearity, and it has a great influence on the quality of the signal at the receiver. A
linearization technique is therefore an urgent need. In addition, a simple circuit configuration with
a low third-order intermodulation distortion (IMD3) is required.
Several linearization techniques such as feedforward method [1], adaptive predistortion method [2],
dual-parallel modulation technique [3], serially cascaded modulation technique [4], and analog pre-
distortion technique [5–7] have been considered. However, most of them are very complex.
The schematic of the common predistortion technique is shown in the Fig. 1. The input signal is
divided into an electrical delay line path and a nonlinearity generation path. In the upper path, the
fundamental signal passes through the electrical delay line. In the lower path, the block generates
the nonlinear components. In addition, in order to change 180 degrees phase of the lower path,
phase shifter should be introduced. Since an electrical delay lines and phase shifters increase the
complexity of the system, in this letter, a novel simple analog RF predistortion circuit is designed
in CMOS process.
2. PROPOSED PREDISTORTION CIRCUIT
The nonlinear of an ROF link is mainly determined by the non-linear laser. For two-tone test
analysis, the input driving current signal consists of two equal-amplitude signals closely spaced
at the frequencies near the desired band of operation, so the output signal will contain frequency
components at DC, ω1 , ω2 , 2ω1 , 2ω2 , 3ω1 , 3ω2 , ω1 ± ω2 , 2ω1 ± ω2 , 2ω2 ± ω1 , and so on. A significant
problem arises if two third-order nonlinearity IMD products (2ω2 -ω1 and 2ω1 -ω2 ) fall in the desired
pass band. The performance of the system is influenced by intermodulation products generated

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2016 Progress In Electromagnetic Research Symposium (PIERS), Shanghai, China, 8–11 August

Linear
RFin RFout
Laser
Noninear

Figure 1: The schematic of the common predistortion technique.

Vdd Vc

R1
C3
RFout

V2
Q6
R3
Q3 Q2 Q1 Q4
V1 V2 C4
R2
RF in
C2

C1
Q5
L1

Figure 2: Overall predistortion circuit.

by the modulation of the laser diode. Even-order IMD products can be negligible as they are far
enough out of band.
The linearization technique uses the nonlinearity of the circuit having the inverse transfer char-
acteristic of the laser. When the output signal from the predistortion circuit is passed through
the laser, the distortion components cancel and only the linear components remain. Therefore, the
overall linearity of the optical fiber system using the linearization technique is improved. The pro-
posed predistortion lineariser consists of a common gate amplifier and push-pull amplifier operating
as a gain-boosting amplifier as shown in Fig. 2, where L1 and C1 are Bias-Tee. The transistors
Q3 operates in the saturation region, and Q2 works in the sub-threshold region for compensating
the third-order nonlinear of the Q3. So Q2 and Q3 can be seen as the linear path. Besides, Q1
also works in the sub-threshold region as the nonlinear path. The effective transconductance GQ1
increases by a factor of 1+A, where A is the gain of gain-boosting amplifier. A can be adjusted
by changing the supply voltage Vc . Because of the factor of 1+A, transistor Q1 is designed with a
small size, in order not to affect the matching problem. The capacitor C2 and C4 are employed to
couple the input to the gate of the gain-boosting amplifier and output of the gain-boosting amplifier
to the gate of the transistor Q1. The signal that passes through the MOS transistor is expanded
the transfer function into the Taylor series:

Io = g11 vin + g12 vin

2
+ g13 vin
3
+··· (1)

where g11 g12 and g13 are the coefficients related to the MOS transistor transfer function. Then, the
signal from the predistortion circuit is:
2 3
Io = G1 vin + G2 vin + G3 vin (2)

where,
! "
G1 = g11 + g21 + (1 + A)g31 ,
! "
G2 = g12 + g22 + (1 + A)2 g32 ,
G3 = g33 (1 + A)3

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 2016 Progress In Electromagnetic Research Symposium (PIERS), Shanghai, China, 8–11 August

When the output signal directly drives the laser diode, the output power of the laser diode is
expressed as:
# $ 2 # $ 3
Po = G1 a1 vin + a1 G2 + a2 G21 vin + a1 G3 + 2a2 G1 G2 + a3 G31 vin + ··· (3)

-5

Reduced IM3
-10

-15

-20

1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2.0
Freq(GHz)

Figure 3: Difference of IMD3 with and without linearization method.

(a) (b)

Figure 4: Simulation results in 1.4 GHz, (a) with Q1, (b) without Q1.

Figure 5: Circuit layout.

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2016 Progress In Electromagnetic Research Symposium (PIERS), Shanghai, China, 8–11 August

3 ) is zero in order to suppress the nonlinearity

In Eq. (3), the coefficient of the 3rd-order term (vin
of the laser diode. The key issues for IM3 suppression are the gain A of the push-pull amplifier and
the RF input power. The IM3 components are influenced by changes in the control factors, such
as the gain A, the input power.
3. RESULTS
In order to evaluate the performance of the predistortion technique described, an optical fiber link
has been simulated under two-tone transmission conditions with and without the Q1 transistor. The
3rd-order IMD products of the directly-modulated laser are expected to be substantially reduced
as a result of the overall improvement in linearity that results from the use of the predistortion
technique. The laser model based on the rate equation is designed by symbolically defined device
(SDDs) models in the Advanced Design System (ADS) [8]. Simulation results are presented in
Fig. 3 and Fig. 4, and show as much as 20-dBm improvement of the linearity of the optical fiber
access system at 1.4 GHz. Fig. 5 shows the layout of the circuit. Now the circuit is being fabricated
with the TSMC 0.18 µm CMOS technology.
4. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a CMOS analog predistortion linearization is firstly proposed that can effectively
suppress the IMD products in a directly-modulated laser. Simulation results suggest that this
approach can reduce the IMD for 20 dBm at 1.4 GHz. When the analog predistortion linearization
method described in this paper is incorporated, the ROF system can be seen to provide substantial
nonlinearity suppression compared with conventional structure. Our predistortion circuit is suitable
and flexible in advanced RoF systems.
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