Performance analysis of direct-detection optical CDMA communication systems with avalanche photodiodes

Direct-detection optical code-division multiple-access (CDMA) communication systems with avalanche photodiode (APD) photodetectors are investigated. A Chernoff upper bound, modified Chernoff upper bound, and Gaussian approximation on the probability of bit error are presented for general APDs and arbitrary {0,1}-valued optical signature sequences. Multiple-user interference, shot-noise, and receiver thermal noise effects on the bit error probability are studied in detail. One-coincidence optical orthogonal codes and prime codes are considered in the numerical analysis. Equal-weight orthogonal signaling formats that do not require dynamic estimation of the receiver threshold are proposed. The results suggest that equal-weight orthogonal signaling schemes are preferable to the on-off orthogonal signaling schemes commonly employed in the literature