In this paper, optical noise is reduced by a differential detector, which is composed of a beam splitter and two photodiodes whose spectral responses are different each other. In this configuration, the automatic gain control circuit is not required for noise cancellation because the noise intensities at the two photodiodes are kept equal by a beam splitter. The signal to noise ratio in a differential detector with a beam splitter was improved to be 14 ㏈ higher than in a single photodiode with optical filtering.