Optimized Designs for Fiber-Optic Cable Television Systems

System design trade-offs for the application of fiber optics to CATV are presented with the system partitioned into trunking and local distribution. Performance and cost comparisons for analog Intensity Modulation (IM), analog Frequency Modulation (FM), and digital (PCM) approaches are presented. The performance and cost effects of multiplexing are presented for all modulation bases. The paper concludes with a summary showing that multiplexed digital fiber optics systems are best for most of the trunking areas, with analog approaches recommended for local distribution.