Abstract

Commercially available fiber Fabry-Perot (FFP) filters have been used with erbium-doped-fiber amplifiers (EDFA’s) in high-performance direct-detection receivers that have achieved less than 100 photons/bit sensitivity¹ at 10^-9 bit error rate at 2.3 Gbit/s. The use of single-stage or cascaded FFP filters indicates that tens,² hundreds, or even a thousand³ channels may be multiplexed into the EDFA spectrum. The ease with which these highly sensitive and selective receivers can be implemented has made direct detection a serious contender for future dense wavelength-division-multiplex (WDM) systems and networks.

© 1993 Optical Society of America