Limiter-discriminator detection of a coherent optical heterodyne M-ary CPFSK receiver

The performance of a coherent optical M-ary continuous-phase frequency-shift-keying (CPFSK) receiver using limiter-discriminator (L-D) detection is investigated. It is shown that L-D detection of CPFSK optical signals offers the best performance for a large normalized IF beat spectral linewidth, Delta nu T. When the modulation index is unity, the receiver is immune to laser phase noise and can produce (M/4) exp (-SNR) symbol error probability, which may be considered as the upper bound if the optimal modulation index is used (SNR is the signal-to-noise ratio per symbol). Optimum modulation indexes are 0.8 and 1 at Delta nu T=1% and Delta nu T=2%, respectively, for M=4, 8, and 16.<
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