Comparison of BER measurements in a FFH-OCDMA system with incoherent and coherent sources

Abstract

Bit error rate (BER) performance comparison in a FFH-OCDMA system with incoherent and coherent optical sources is performed by using a superfluorescent fiber source as an incoherent source and a single-mode multiwavelength fiber laser as a coherent source. Experimental results show that, the power penalty associated with the beat noise is approximately 1 dB. A measurement of the beat noise RF spectrum, with a matched encoder/decoder pair, is also performed and compared to numerical calculations.