OPTICAL CODE-DIVISION-MULTIPLEXED SYSTEMS BASED ON SPECTRAL ENCODING OF NONCOHERENT SOURCES

In this paper, we present a new category of optical CDMA systems which work based on spectral encoding. In such systems, that we will refer to as Frequency-Encoded CDMA (FE-CDMA) systems, the coding is done in the frequency domain while in the usual CDMA systems the code multipli es the modulation signal in the time domain. We present a new type of FE-CDMA system, based on encoding noncoherent broadband sources. We di scuss the advantages of our system compared to other optical CDMA syst ems and present its performance. We show that very efficient low-cost, CDMA systems can be obtained with aggregate throughput of many gigabi ts per second. Also, for this system, the spreading gain of CDMA is in dependent of the modulation bandwidth. Hence, the system can accommoda te variable bit rates, naturally.