On the Experimental Characterization of Beat Noise in 2-D Time-Spreading Wavelength-Hopping OCDMA Systems

The results of a preliminary experimental characterization of beat noise for the case of a particular two-dimensional time-spreading wavelength-hopping optical code family are presented. Beat noise is evaluated at a data rate of 2.5 Gb/s with and without time gating. Results indicate that this form of noise introduces significant system power penalties for both cases, with the former approach more robust in this respect