Probability of error in digital fiber optic systems with inter-symbol interference and signal dependent additive noise

Data transmission via optical fiber is a new discipline of communication theory. The principal difference from conventional baseband data transmission, which is characterized by a signal independent additive Gaussian noise, is the existence of a signal dependent shot noise.This paper presents a technique for estimating the error probability performance of digital systems with inter-symbol interference and signal dependent additive noise. For binary antipodal (±1) systems, the approximate upper bound to the error probability is twice the lower bound. Hence either can be taken as a good approximation to the actual error probability. The technique is then applied to a model of some promising optical data communication systems and a good approximation to the error probability is obtained. Some observations about the effect of various system parameters on the error probability and some numerical examples are presented.