Error-rate performance of optical amplifierswith Fabry-Perot filters

Abstract

The error-rate performance of an ON-OFF keyed lightwave receiver having an optical amplifier followed by a Fabry-Perot filter is analysed. Receivers with sampling and with integrate-and-dump threshold comparison are compared with the well known result for a matched optical filter. The Fabry-Perot filter decreases the sensitivity at 10-9 error rate from 76 to 89 photon/bit (peak) with optimum optical filter bandwidth and postdetection integration time.