On the BER estimation of experimental direct detection OFDM systems

Abstract

We propose to extend the exhaustive Gaussian approach (EGA) to assess the bit error ratio (BER) of experimental direct detection optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing setups. Excellent agreement between the actual probability density function (PDF) of each subcarrier and the Gaussian PDF estimated from a set of experimental runs is shown. The proposed EGA allows evaluate quickly the BER as only a few hundreds of runs are required to reach stabilized BER estimates. The BER estimated by EGA has shown an excellent agreement with the BER estimates provided by direct error counting.