In this paper, we investigated the signal-to-noise ratio improvement in a differential detector, which is a function of the optical noise coupling ratio and the differential gain ratio. A differential detector consists of two photodiodes and a differential amplifier. The differential detector reduced the noise component and improved the signal-to-noise ratio by about 20 dB when the differential gain ratio equals to the optical noise coupling ratio. The differential detector is very effective in removing the environmental optical noise or interference from an adjacent optical channel. This method is also effective when the noise wavelength is similar to the signal.