Abstract
A measurement technique for the noise performance of a white-light optical signal processor is presented. The technique utilizes a scanning photometer to trace out the output noise intensity fluctuation of the optical system. The effect of noise performance due to noise perturbation at the input and Fourier planes is measured. The experimental results, except for amplitude noise at the input plane, show the claims for better noise immunity, if the optical system is operating in the partially coherent regime. We have also measured the noise performance due to perturbation along the optical axis of the system. The experimental results show that the resulting output SNR improves considerably by increasing the bandwidth and source size of the illuminator. The optimum noise immunity occurs for phase noise at the input and output planes. For amplitude noise, the optimum SNR occurs at the Fourier plane. In brief, the experimental results confirm the analytical results that we recently evaluated.
© 1985 Optical Society of America
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