Pulse position modulation for spectrum-sliced transmission

An original analysis is presented for spectrum-sliced (SS) transmission employing digital pulse position modulation (PPM) and maximum likelihood detection. The treatment is placed within the context of low-cost access networks, where system parameters allow employment of the Gaussian approximation. SS-PPM is compared to on-off keying (SS-OOK) in the presence of dispersion and found to be typically some 2-4 dB more sensitive. In addition, comparison is made with laser-based OOK where the optimum SS-PPM configuration reduces or eliminates the SS power penalty.