Photoelectron Counting in Optical Communications

摘要

Scientific results are reported on a combined theoretical and experimental investigation of the processing of photoelectron counts as a means for observing low intensity optical communication signals. It is shown that the numbers of photoelectrons counted within successive equal time intervals, constitute a discrete-time signal which has the second moment correlation statistics of a signal with additive independent noise, and which can be processed by linear techniques. This count signal is shown also to have non-linear characteristics which can be represented statistically by higher order correlation functions. (Author)