Sensitivity Deterioration of Free-Space Optical Coherent/Non-Coherent OOK Modulation Receiver by Ambient Light Noise

In free-space optical (FSO) communication systems, on–off keying (OOK) is a widely used modulation format. Coherent and non-coherent OOK receivers with sensitivities of −54.60 dBm and −51.25 dBm, respectively, were built with a communication rate of 1 Gbit/s and a bit error rate of 10(−3). In an FSO communication system, the parameters must be designed to ensure a sufficient link margin. In contrast to optical fiber systems, FSO systems have ambient light (AL) noise such as sunlight. The efficiency of sunlight coupling in the single-mode fiber (SMF) of the receivers was calculated in this study. For a signal light with AL, the change in the main components of noise and the sensitivity deterioration were theoretically analyzed and experimentally verified in conditions of coherent reception and non-coherent reception with a preamplifier. For coherent reception, the theoretical sensitivity deterioration results are consistent with the experimental results which indicate that coherent reception exhibits better anti-AL noise performance than non-coherent reception when the power spectral density of the AL is the same. Coherent and non-coherent receivers coupled with SMF can work in direct sunlight. When the receiver lens diameter is greater than 4.88 × 10(−4) m, the anti-AL noise performance of the receiver can be improved by increasing the receiver lens diameter.