Characterizing filtered light waves corrupted by phase noise

The phase noise associated with single-mode semiconductor lasers must be accounted for in performance studies of lightwave communication systems. The standard phase noise model is a Brownian-motion stochastic process. Although many analyses of lightwave communication systems have been published, none, to the authors knowledge, has fully adhered to the standard model. The reason is that a proper characterization of filtered lightwave signal had not been achieved. Such a characterization, along with theoretical approaches to obtaining it, is detailed. The authors show, for example, how to generate probability density functions (PDFs) of the magnitude of a filtered laser tone (with special attention to the tail region) and how to analytically represent the characteristic function of the PDF in closed form in the small-phase-noise realm. With the characterization in place, the stage is now set for determining the bit-error rate performance of advanced detection techniques which seek to mitigate the phase noise impairment