The Effect of Timing Jitter on High-speed OFDM Systems

Timing jitter is emerging as an important factor in determining the performance of high-speed orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, particularly in optical OFDM systems where bit rates reach 100 Gbit/s and beyond. In this paper, we propose a novel timing jitter matrix which is used to study the rotational effect and intercarrier interference (ICI) caused by timing jitter in high-speed OFDM systems. This work shows that timing jitter greatly degrades the performance of high-speed OFDM systems. Further, ICI is the dominant effect. When timing jitter is correlated it is shown that the ICI depends on the subcarrier frequencies. Finally, the theoretical analysis of ICI power using the timing jitter matrix has been compared with simulation with the results showing very good agreement.