Balanced differential phase-shift keying detector performance: an analytical study

A simple explanation of the observed approximately 3 dB advantage of differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) balanced detection over the intensity-modulated directly detected (IM-DD) type detection that can be easily used for system engineering purposes is presented. A Gaussian approximation is used to describe the tails of the detected noisy random signals leading to an analytical explanation of the observed approximately 3 dB advantage of DPSK balanced detection over the IM-DD type detection.