Patent ID: 6904237
Filing Date: 2005-06-07
Classification: H04B

Abstract:
1. A circuit for identifying a bit error probability of an optical signal in an optical fiber communication system comprising: an analyzer for determining an optical signal-to-noise ratio of an optical message signal, said optical message signal having a signal power; a receiver supplied with said optical message signal for demodulating said optical message signal, said receiver including an optical filter having a bandwidth, a photodetector including a photodiode having a dark current and a sensitivity, and an amplifier having an equivalent spectral input noise current density, said receiver having an overall bandwidth and producing a demodulated signal with a plurality of amplitude values; a histogram calculator supplied with said demodulated signal for calculating a histogram representing respective frequencies of occurrence of said amplitude values of said demodulated signal, each of said amplitude values being allocated to a different random process and each random process having an average value, and said histogram calculator calculating a standard deviation for each random process from said optical signal-to-noise ratio, said signal power, said overall bandwidth of said receiver, said bandwidth of said optical filter, said dark current of said photodiode and said sensitivity of said photodiode; and a bit error probability calculator which calculates a probability, based on said average value and said standard deviation for each random process, of each random process crossing a predetermined threshold, and which calculates a bit error probability for said optical message signal as a sum of the respective probabilities for the random processes.