Patent ID: 7260330

Claim:
An optical communication system, comprising: a transmitter designed to transmit a transmitted waveform; an optical correlation receiver in optical communication with said transmitter, said optical correlation receiver comprising: an optical pre-amplifier which receives the transmitted waveform and generates an amplified waveform; a reference waveform generator which generates a reference waveform, wherein the reference waveform generator comprises a receiver clock with a time delay adjustment; a correlation modulator in optical communication with said optical pre-amplifier and in electrical communication with the reference waveform generator, wherein the time delay of the reference waveform sent to the correlation modulator is adjusted to maximize correlation of the amplified waveform with the time-adjusted reference waveform, wherein the correlation modulator receives the amplified waveform and the time-adjusted reference waveform, and multiplies the amplified waveform and the time-adjusted reference waveform to generate an improved signal based on the amplified waveform and the time-adjusted reference waveform, which can be filtered to maximize signal-to-noise ratio; a photodetector in optical communication with said correlation modulator, wherein the photodetector receives the improved signal and generates an electrical signal; and an electrical filter coupled to the photodetector designed to integrate the electrical signal and generate a filtered electrical signal having a maximized signal-to-noise ratio.