This document discusses digital and analog photonic transmission systems. For digital transmission, it describes the design of optical receivers and sources of error such as intersymbol interference. It provides equations for bit error rate (BER) in terms of the number of electron-hole pairs detected and the Gaussian distribution of received signal amplitudes. For analog transmission, it defines signal-to-noise ratio and derives an expression relating SNR to system parameters. It also discusses considerations for digital link analysis and design such as power and rise time budgets to meet data rate and distance requirements.