This article presents a detailed survey on both asynchronous and synchronous Optical Code-Division Multiple-Access (OCDMA) systems based on 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D codes, distinctively. Accordingly, different coding schemes along with their multiplexing capacity, correlation features, advantages and drawbacks are addressed and benchmarked. Additionally, different detection techniques such as direct and coherent detection and their capability to handle Multiple Access-Interference are also discussed. Furthermore, the main OCDMA systems from the last two decades are summarized considering their coding schemes, performance, device components, and applications. Therefore, a new comparative study in terms of spectral efficiency and bit error rate for 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D asynchronous and synchronous OCDMA systems is carried out. Numerical results shown that the 3-D MD code stands out among the codes with superior performance as well as support to higher data rates and number of users.

In order to solve the problem of one-dimensional code length, two-dimensional code spatial length, phase induced intensity noise PIIN effect, improved system capacity, and increased the number of simultaneous users, a new three-dimensional spectral/time/spatial variable weight zero cross correlation code for non-coherent spectral amplitude coding-optical code division multiple access (3D-VWZCC-SAC-OCDMA) is proposed in this paper. Its construction is based on a one-dimensional (1D) spectral sequence and two-dimensional (2D) temporal/spatial sequences, which are characterized by the property of zero cross correlation ZCC. The simulation results demonstrate that our code proves high immunity against PIIN noise and shot noise, it increases multiplexing ability when the passage is from (1D) and (2D) to (3D) up to 5.112 and 2.248 times, and it saves −7.04 dBm and −5.9 dBm of the receiver power due to simple detection at the receiver; furthermore, the 3D-VWZCC system capacity has outperformed the 3D-PD, 3D-PD/MD and 3D-DCS/MD codes, which reach 3686, 2908, and 3234 times, respectively. Moreover, our code offers better performance, in terms of data rates, with up to 2 Gbps compared to previous codes, which makes the system meet the requirements of optical communication networks. Further, 3D-VWZCC is also simulated in Optisystem software, where our code offers a transmission quality Q reaching 11.56 with a bit error rate BER of $1.99\times {10}^{-31}$ despite a high number of users.