Optical receiver performance evaluation

摘要

An essential parameter in determining the system power budget in an optical transmission system is optical receiver sensitivity, defined as the minimum average optical power for a given bit-error rate (BER). When designing a good optical receiver, it is critical to understand the different parameters that will impair overall receiver sensitivity. This article provides an in-depth analysis of complete receiver optical sensitivity and the potential power penalties related to the accumulation of random noise and intersymbol interference (ISI) in both amplitude and timing. The analysis is based on normal receiver sensitivity, assuming an ideal input signal with negligible impairment from factors like ISI, rise/fall time, jitter, and transmitter relative intensity noise (RIN).