Crosstalk and prefiltering in a two-channel ASK heterodyne detection system without the effect of laser phase noise

The authors present an experimental and theoretical study on the crosstalk in a two-channel amplitude-shift keying (ASK) heterodyne detection system in which the effect of laser phase noise is negligible. Three results are described: (1) the dependence of the crosstalk penalty on the ratio of channel separation to bit rate and on the optical power level of the image band (2) comparison of the measured crosstalk penalities with the ones obtained from a simple model, and (3) the effect of electrical prefiltering on the crosstalk penalty. It is concluded that the channel separation can be as low as four times the bit rate without incurring any crosstalk penalty as long as the optical power of the image band is comparable to the optical power of the desired channel. In addition, electrical prefiltering of the transmitted signals significantly reduces the crosstalk penalty in multichannel ASK heterodyne systems in which the effect of laser phase noise is negligible