A Gram-Charlier series method of calculating the probability of error in lightwave transmission systems

A Gram-Charlier series method has previously been applied to the calculation of the conditional probability of error, for a fixed data sequence, in the presence of intersymbol interference, detector multiplication noise, shot noise, and thermal noise. The probability of error is obtained by averaging the conditional probability of error over all possible data sequences. In this paper it is shown how the computational efficiency of the Gram-Charlier series method can be improved by calculating the probability of error without the need for an exhaustive averaging procedure.