Owing to the limited cell size of eNodeB (eNB), the relay node has emerged as an attractive solution for the long-term evolution (LTE) system. The nonlinear limit of the alternative method to multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) based on frequency division multiplexing (FDM) for orthogonal FDM (OFDM) is analysed over varying transmission spans. In this reported work, it is shown that the degradation pattern over the linear, intermixing and nonlinear propagation regions is consistent for the 2 and the 2.6 GHz bands. The proposed bands experienced a linear increase in the error vector magnitude (EVM) for both the linear and the nonlinear regions proportional to the increasing transmission spans. In addition, an optical launch power between -2 and 2 dBm achieved a significantly lower EVM than the LTE limit of 8% for the 10-60 km spans.