The performance of optical fiber direct-sequence spread-spectrum multiple-access communications systems

Because of the random nature of the photodetection process and the multiple-user interference, an exact analysis of avalanche photodiode (APD)-based optical code division multiple-access (CDMA) communications systems is intractable and quite often, Monte Carlo (MC) simulations which yield exact estimates of system performance in terms of bit error rates (BERs) require a prohibitive computational burden. A quick and accurate MC method for simulating APD-based optical CDMA systems is presented. In particular, a performance analysis of optical CDMA systems employing optical orthogonal and prime sequence codes is undertaken.