Error probability of optical PSK systems with nonlinear loop dynamics and postdetection filtering

We describe a numerical approach to the problem of phase recovery in coherent optical communications systems corrupted by phase noise. Two advantages not present in previous treatments are the facts that the effects of the nonlinearity are treated exactly and a probability distribution for the filtered output is obtained without resorting to upper bounds. The results are applied to a sensitivity calculation for phase‐shift‐keyed systems.