Performance Analysis of an Integrated Spectral OCDMA Technique Including Coupler Imbalance

In this letter, we show, for the first time, that an integrated spectral optical code-division multiple-access (OCDMA) technique has a comparable performance with respect to coherent OCDMA techniques based on a crosstalk analysis. The code set is further studied on its resilience against imbalances in the 3-dB couplers of the en/decoders (E/Ds). The orthogonality remains acceptable for imbalance penalties up to 1 dB. The analysis done in the letter considers a cascade and a tree E/D which shows negligible differences in performance.