Modelling and analysis of minimum shift keying modulation in optical systems

Minimum Shift Keying (MSK) has been long proven to be a successful modulation format in wireless communication [1]. Although the concept of applying MSK in optical transmission systems was studied as early as the 1990s, it has recently aroused a renewed interest in the research community owing to its unique characteristics such as compact spectrum, continuous phase and also its less comparative complexity in achievement compared to other advanced modulation formats. In this thesis the author built an MSK transmission simulation platform using programming software in the name of SIMULINK™ and VPItransmissionMaker™ and investigated the gaps in current MSK research over the past few years. The contributions are: • A range of various MSK transmitters and receivers proposed by different researchers were systematically summarized and evaluated. • A novel MSK modulation format DC33 MSK is proposed. • The resistance of various MSK formats in the presence of imperfections of transmitters and receivers were analysed. • The performance of novel MSK formats in long haul transmission including residual dispersion, dispersion mapping and effects of nonlinear noise were analysed. It was found that the novel DC33 MSK format is not only less complex to generate than the conventional linear MSK signal, but also has many advantages over linear MSK signals in terms of receiver sensitivity, resistance to transmitter and receiver noises and residual dispersion. The findings in this thesis show that DC33 MSK is a good candidate for future optical transmission systems being a good compromise between spectral efficiency, robustness and complexity.