Dynamic Range Extension of 10-Gb/s DPSK Packet Receivers Using Optical limiting Amplifiers

We demonstrate a method to extend the dynamic range of 10-Gb/s DPSK receivers in the presence of burst mode data recovery. We achieve a dynamic range of 25 dB by operating linear optical amplifiers (LOAs) to saturation to achieve fast optical limiting amplification. DPSK receivers with balanced detection enable fixed decision threshold to eliminate the need of guard time and inherent sensitivity penalty associated wiuth the adaptive threshold as in conventional OOK receivers.