A Novel Closed Form Moment Expression for Filtered Semiconductor Laser Phase Noise

Abstract

A novel closed form expression for the moments of a filtered semiconductor laser phase noise random variable is derived. These moments are essential for statistical characterization of filtered phase noise in heterodyne optical receivers, where some function of the phase noise process is usually integrated over a symbol interval. The derived expression enables the computation of a given moment from the knowledge of the product of the laser linewidth and the symbol interval. The latter quantity will be referred to as the linewidth-duration product (LDP).