Direct detection optical overlapping PPM-CDMA communication systems with double optical hardlimiters

Direct detection optical code-division multiple-access (CDMA) communication systems involving overlapping pulse-position modulation (OPPM) is considered. Double optical hardlimiters placed before and after the correlator at the receiver side is proposed for this system. The performance (in terms of the bit error probability) of this system is evaluated taking into account the effect of both the multiple-user interference and the photodetector shot noise. Both the receiver dark current and thermal noise are ignored in our analysis since their effect is very minor. The performance of the above receiver is compared to that of the OPPM-CDMA correlator receiver without hardlimiters, OPPM-CDMA optimum receiver, and OOK-CDMA optimum receiver. Our results reveal that, for given pulsewidth and throughput constraints, significant improvement in the performance is acquired when adding double optical hardlimiters to the correlator of the OPPM-CDMA receiver. Moreover the performance of this system is asymptotically close to the optimum OPPM-CDMA system and is considerably superior to the optimum OOK-CDMA system. It is also reported that the capacity of the proposed system is about 5.3 times greater than that of the optimum OOK-CDMA system.