Abstract

As the application areas of optical fiber communication systems become more diversified, the optical receiver has to satisfy many different and often conflicting requirements. This tutorial takes a close look at receiver design in terms of sensitivity, dynamic range, acquisition time, data rate, and pattern transparency. State-of-the-art performances of both photodetectors and low-noise-receiver preamplifiers are reported. The emerging trends toward monolithic Integration and high data rates are also discussed.

© 1985 Optical Society of America