Optical orthogonal code-division multiple-access system .I. APD noise and thermal noise

In an optical multiple-access system, overall system throughput efficiency add significant implementation cost-reduction would be achieved if many users could access a common optical channel at any time without control among users. Recently one such scheme, an optical orthogonal code division multiple-access system (OOCDMA), was introduced by Salehi et al. (1982) for the case of no noise. In this paper, some extensions of that work are presented, including the effects of avalanche photodiode (APD) noise and thermal noise as well as interference for the OOCDMA direct-detection receiver. Since it has been shown that an optical hard-limiter before the receiver correlator can reduce the interference effect for the OOCDMA system in the absence of noise, the hard-limiter role in the presence of thermal and APD noise is also examined