Mitigation of beat noise in time-wavelength optical code-division multiple-access systems

This paper presents an analysis of two methods for enhancing the performance of two-dimensional time-wavelength Optical code-division multiple-access systems by mitigating the effects of beat noise. The first methodology makes use of an optical hard limiter (OHL) in the receiver prior to the optical correlator; a general formula for the error probability as a function of crosstalk level for systems adopting OHLs is given, and the implications of the OHL's nonideal transfer characteristics are then examined. The second approach adopts pulse position modulation, and system performance is estimated and compared to that associated with on-off keying.