随着光通信系统传输速率的提高，尤其是光分组交换网络的使用，光的相关检测技术将在未来的通信领域(包括IP路由等)中发挥越来越重要的作用。从基于光纤色散的光学相关器基本原理出发，采用理论分析和数值仿真两种方法比较了不同带宽光源对光学相关器性能的影响，分析了光源随机相位噪声向幅度噪声转化的问题，得到了幅度噪声与光源带宽的关系，以及光源带宽不同时光学相关器输出的信噪比变化。根据仿真结果得到，基于非相干光源的光学相关器，能对速率为10 Gb/s的8位和16位码元数据流进行高速相关检测，而32位的码元数据流仅能采用相干光源进行检测。此外，还对非相干光源在模拟信号的相关检测中的应用进行了探讨。

With the increasing of high-bit-rates transmission over optical fiber and especially with the appearance of packet-switched networks, optical correlation detection technology will have many applications in future telecommunication systems including IP router. Beginning with the basic theory of the optical correlator based on fiber dispersion, the influence of the bandwidths of different light sources on the performance of optical correlator is compared by using theoretical analysis and numerical simulation, and phase noise converted into intensity noise by dispersion is analyzed. So it concludes that intensity noise is related with the light source bandwidth, and the signal-to-noise ratio of the optical correlation can be changed when using light source with different bandwidths. According to the simulation results, it is demonstrated that optical correlator based on incoherent light source can recognize 8-bit and 16-bit patterns in 10-Gb/s data streams, but correlation detection of 32-bit patterns can only use coherent light source. Besides, potential application of optical correlator based on incoherent light in the detection of the analog signal is discussed.