Capacity and error exponent for the direct detection photon channel. I

Abstract

The capacity and the lower bound on the error exponent of a direct detection optical channel are derived. The channel input in a T-second interval is a waveform satisfying certain peak and average power constraints for the optical signal. The channel output is a Poisson process with a given intensity parameter; the intensity parameter takes account of the dark-current signal component. An explicit construction for an exponentially optimum family of codes is also presented.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>