HFAN-03.0.2: Optical Receiver Performance Evaluation

Abstract

In an optical transmission system, one essential parameter in determining the system power budget is the optical receiver sensitivity, which is defined as the minimum average optical power for a given bit error rate (BER). To make a good optical receiver design, it is critical to understand the different parameters that will cause impairments in the overall receiver sensitivity. This application note provides an in-depth analysis of the complete receiver optical sensitivity and the potential power penalties related to the accumulation of random noise and inter-symbol interference (ISI) in both amplitude and timing. The analysis is based on normal receiver sensitivity assuming an ideal input signal with negligible impairment such as ISI, rise/fall time, jitter, and transmitter relative intensity noise (RIN). Read full article.