Survey of Spectral Amplitude Coding Optical Code Division Multiple Access Families

Quest for high capacity communication have led the research community to explore a plethora of technologies. Among these, optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) technique stands tall with support for high data rate connectivity in terms of data, reach and the number of subscribers. The development of OCDMA based networks started with the design and implementation of one dimensional (1D) codes, which provides effective correlation properties to reduce the effect of interference due to multiple users (MAI) and phase-induced-intensity-noise (PIIN) in order to provide the required system capacity. Several families of codes have been developed to determine the most suitable combination between code length, weight against the auto- and cross-correlation property respectively. This survey paper will analyze the most commonly used families of codes from spectral amplitude coding (SAC) based OCDMA systems names Double Weight (DW) codes, Diagonal codes, zero cross-correlation (ZCC) codes, and hybrid codes in terms of different performance parameters and identify the most suitable combination of code length ($L$), code weight ($w$), and cross-correlation ($\lambda _{C}$) to be utilized for next generation communication applications that can provide high capacity and cardinality.