Design of efficient optical fiber communication systems for CATV/HDTV distribution

We present an efficient design of intensity-modulation direct-detection optical fiber communication systems with erbium-doped fiber amplifiers to support future CATV/HDTV distribution and broadcasting. We consider three system configurations for CATV applications. The first one is the in-line amplifier scheme. The second scheme is based on a passive optical power splitter and optically-preamplified receivers, while the third scheme uses hybrid passive and active optical power splitters. The receiver sensitivity is also analyzed for various system parameters. The schemes are compared in terms of the number of HDTV subscribers and the superiority of the third scheme over the second scheme is demonstrated.