BEP of an Optically Pre-Amplified PPM Receiver with Arbitrary Optical Filter Response

We present a novel analytical method for the evaluation of the Bit-Error-Probability (BEP) of optically pre-amplified Pulse-Position-Modulation (PPM) receivers. The method takes into account the non-ideal optical filter response and utilizes a finite series expansion to calculate the BEP. Using the proposed approach, it is possible to accurately evaluate the PPM BEP for arbitrarily shaped filters where the well-established χ 2 method only provides approximate results. The method is applied for ideal passband and Lorentzian response wide optical filters, and the obtained results are in perfect agreement with the χ 2 approximation for the ideal filter, while a discrepancy of 0.5 dB is observed between the two methods for the Lorentzian filter.