Chip-level detector with optimum comparator threshold and correlation receiver with an electrical hard-limiter for optical CDMA

Two new receiver structures for fiber-optic code-division multiple-access (FO-CDMA), namely chip-level detector with optimum comparator threshold and correlation receiver with an electrical hard-limiter are proposed. Performance of these new receivers for a binary pulse position modulation frame time-hopping FO-CDMA network is compared to performance of some basic receiver structures such as correlation receiver and chip-level detector. The results predict that chip-level detector with optimum comparator threshold is superior to chip-level detector for received low signal powers. Furthermore, the error floors of correlation receiver with an electrical hard-limiter are significantly lower than those of all other considered receiver structures in a wide range of the received power.