The internally coded time-hopping coherent ultra-short light pulse code division multiple access (CULP CDMA) scheme (recently introduced) with an optical amplifier is described and its performance in fibre-optic communication systems is analysed. In accordance with the important role of optical amplifiers in optical communication systems, a preamplifier at the input of the receiver is used in order to compensate the losses because of the spectral encoder, spectral decoder and optical fibre path. The authors evaluate the bit error rate of the system considering the effects of the multiple access interference, noise because of the optical amplifier and thermal noise using saddle point approximation, and compare the results with those of the conventional CULP CDMA system with and without an amplifier. The numerical results indicate a substantial improvement in the performance of the coded system in comparison with the uncoded one. In addition, the negative effect of amplifier noise in the proposed scheme is much less than that of the conventional CULP CDMA system.