Accurate performance evaluation of weakly coherent optical systems

An accurate performance evaluation approach which uses a closed-form exact analytical expression of the phase noise moments is presented. This enables one to derive a high-order Gaussian quadrature rule for the integrations needed to take into account the phase noise in the computation of error probability. A systematic comparison with results obtained through a Monte Carlo simulation shows that the approach is more accurate than previous methods. The analysis is performed on ASK and FSK heterodyne receivers with integrate-and-dump filtering, envelope detection, and optimized postdetection low-pass filtering. The feasibility of ASK and FSK heterodyne systems at bit rates comparable to the spectral line bandwidth of the laser sources is confirmed. The theory applied seems to be adequate to attack other problems, such as the evaluation of the effects of crosstalk between the FSK filters or among frequency division multiplexed channels