Spread-spectrum optical fibre network based on pulsed coherent correlation

Coherent recombination of a series of pulses derived from a single laser pulse by matched filtering, using optical ladder networks is shown to result in a highly single-peaked correlation function. The technique may be used in a local area network based on a star topology when this coherent correlation is generated using a low coherence source. This provides a more practical but equally powerful alternative to other current proposals.