Optical communication with semiconductor laser diodes

A 25 megabit/sec direct detection optical communication system that used Q=4 PPM signalling was constructed and its performance measured under laboratory conditions. The system used a single-mode AlGaAs laser diode transmitter and low noise silicon avalanche photodiode (APD) photodetector. Comparison of measured performance with the theoretical revealed that modeling the APD output as a Gaussian process under conditions of negligible background radiation and low (less than 10 to the -12 power A) APD bulk leakage currents leads to substantial underestimates of optimal APD gain to use and overestimates of system bit error probability. A procedure is given to numerically compute system performance which uses the more accurate Webb's Approximation of the exact Conradi distribution for the APD ouput signal that does not require excessive amounts of computer time (a few minutes of VAX 8600 CPU time per system operating point). Examples are given which illustrate the breakdown of the Gaussian approximation in assessing system performance. This system achieved a bit error probability of 10 to the -6 power at a received signal energy corresponding to an average of 60 absorbed photons/bit and optimal APD gain of 700.