A simplified approach to digital optical receiver design

A simplified theory for the performance of a digital optical receiver is developed. The receiver sensitivity is calculated in terms of circuit parameters, received and equalized pulse shapes, photodiode parameters and bit-rate. An excellent agreement between this theory and a more complicated analysis by Personick 4] is demonstrated. It is shown that the receiver sensitivity may be improved by launching reduced-width pulses into the fibre, particularly if fibre bandwidth is a significant limitation. Reduced-width pulses bring benefits in source power consumption and lifetime, and in timing recovery.