Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon Health & Science University, Department of Science & Engineering, December 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 130 - 136).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2008. / "August, 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-125). Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, November, 1992. / Title from PDF t.p.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1984. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 128-136).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Committee Chair: Chang, Gee-Kung; Committee Co-Chair: Yu, Jianjun; Committee Member: Altunbasak, Yucel; Committee Member: Ji, Chunayi; Committee Member: Ralph, Stephen; Committee Member: Xu, Jun.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1993. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-120). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2006. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 49-50). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2006. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 55-58). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1987. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 41-42). Also available via the Internet.

The drastic increase in the number of internet users and the general convergence of all other communication systems into an optical system have brought a sharp rise in demand for bandwidth and calls for high capacity transmission networks. Large unamplified transmission reach is another contributor in reducing deployment costs of an optical communication system. Spectrally efficient modulation formats are suggested as a solution to overcome the problems associated with limited channels and bandwidth of dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) optical communication systems. Higher order modulation formats which are considered to be spectrally efficient and can increase the transmission capacity by transmitting more information in the amplitude, phase, polarization or a combination of all was studied. Different detection technologies are to be implemented to suit a particular higher order modulation format. In this research multilevel modulation formats, different detection technologies and a digital signal processing aided receiver were studied in a practical optical transmission system. The work in this thesis started with the implementation of the traditional amplitude shift keying (ASK) modulation and a differential phase shift keying (DPSK) modulation systems as they form the basic building block in the design of higher order modulation formats. Results obtained from using virtual photonics instruments (VPI)simulation software, receiver sensitivity for 10Gbpsnon-return-to-zero (NRZ), amplitude phase shift keying (ASK) and DPSK signals were measured to be -22.7 dBm and -22.0 dBm respectively. Performance comparison for the two modulation formats were done over different transmission distances. ASK also known as On-Off keying (OOK) performed better for shorter lengths whereas DPSK performed better for longer lengths of up to90km.Experimental results on a 10 Gbps NRZ- ASK signal gave a receiver sensitivity of -21.1 dBm from digital signal processing (DSP) aided receiver against -19.8 dBm from the commercial bit error ratio tester (BERT) yielding a small difference of 1.3 dB hence validating the reliability and accuracy of the digital signal processing (DSP) assisted receiver. Traditional direct detection scheme and coherent detection scheme performances were evaluated again on a 10 Gbps NRZ ASK signal. Coherent detection that can achieve a large unamplified transmission reach and has a higher passive optical splitting ratio was first evaluated using the VPI simulation software. Simulation results gave a receiver sensitivity of -30.4 dBm forcoherent detection and -18.3 dBm for direct detection, yielding a gain in receiver sensitivity of 12.1 dB. The complex coherently detected signal, from the experimental setup gave a receiver sensitivity of -20.6 dBm with a gain in receiver sensitivity of 3.5 dBm with respect to direct detection. A multilevel pulse amplitude modulation (4-PAM) that doubles the data rate per channel from10 Gbps to 20 Gbps by transmitting more information in the amplitude of the carrier signal was implemented. This was achieved by modulating the optical amplitude with an electrical four level amplitude shift keyed (ASK) signal. A receiver consisting of a single photodiode, three decision circuits and a decoding logic circuit was used to receive and extract the original transmitted data. A DSP aided receiver was used to evaluate the link performance. A receiver sensitivity of -12.8 dBm is attained with a dispersion penalty of about 7.2 dB after transmission through 25 km of G.652 fibre.