Multichannel system design using optical preamplifiers and accounting for the effects of phase noise, amplifier noise, and receiver noise

A rigorous and accurate model for multichannel direct detection systems where optical preamplification is used is presented. The model accounts for the influence of an optical bandlimiting filter as well as of a polarization filter. Effects of laser phase noise, of spontaneous emission noise from the amplifier, and of shot noise and thermal noise in the receiver front end are accounted for. The predicted phase noise penalty for a single channel configuration is found. For multichannel system design, it is found that a system with many optical channels and no phase noise should have a channel separation of 9.4 bit rates to have less than 1-dB worst-case crosstalk penalty. For a linewidth of 27% of the bit rate in each channel the required spacing increases to 25 bit rates or more