Abstract

Amplifier spontaneous emission (ASE) noise sets the lower limit on the allowed system power in current optical fiber communications systems. ¹² During the optical propagation, ASE noise distorts the signal shape and leads to amplitude and timing jitter, deteriorating the bit error rate (BER). The ASE noise spectrum of each optical amplifier is white over the spectral width of one channel. However, due to the nonlinearity of the optical fibers, the noise beats with the signal, resulting in a modified noise spectrum. The traditional computation of the probability distribution function (pdf) of the electrical signal in the receiver, based on Monte Carlo simulations, only works for a limited range of BERs beyond which the BER has to be enrapolated.³

© 2002 Optical Society of America