Analytical comparison of various fiber-optic CDMA receiver structures

We study the performance of optical code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems using various receivers structures. Two general classes of receivers based on required electronic bandwidth are studied. Optical orthogonal codes (OOCs) are utilized as signature sequences and the performance studied in this paper takes into account the effect of all major noise sources, i.e., quantum shot-noise, dark current noise, and Gaussian circuit noise. Furthermore, this paper introduces a generalized method of analyzing the performance of various optical CDMA receiver structures. Required mean number of photon count per chip time for reliable transmission of data bits for various receiver structures is investigated. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of various receiver structures are discussed.