In this paper, a pulse-shift technique, which divides every time slot (or chip) into equal-width sub-chips, is used to model the effect of fiber temperature fluctuations in incoherent (asynchronous) optical code-division multiple-access (O-CDMA) systems. With the advances in all-optical thresholding technology, power detection of ultrashort optical pulses is possible. This paper also formulates a new pulse-power-detection model for incoherent O-CDMA and applies it to the analysis of the pulseshift technique. Numerical studies and computer simulations are presented to validate the new analytical model. Our study shows that the pulse-power model results in better performance than the conventional pulse-energy model in incoherent O-CDMA. Index Terms-optical code division multiple access, optical fiber communications, temperature fluctuation, time skew I. INTRODUCTION O PTICAL code-division multiple access (O-CDMA) has recently attracted interests in high-speed fiber-optic systems and networks because it carries desirable characteristics, such as dynamic bandwidth assignment, efficient in bursty traffic, soft limit in the number of subscribers, and gradual performance degradation as a function of the number of simultaneous users [1]-[9]. With the advances in technology, multiuser experimental testbeds operating at 10 Gbit/s have been demonstrated [10]-[12]. The choice of suitable optical codes is important in the design of incoherent (or directdetection) O-CDMA systems because the codes affect spectral efficiency, capacity, and the amount of multiple-access interference (MAI), which, in turn, determines system performance.