Optical performance monitoring for the next generation optical communication networks

Today's optical networks function are in a fairly static fashion and are built to operate within well-defined specifications. This scenario is quite challenging for next generation high-capacity systems, since network paths are not static and channel-degrading effects can change with temperature, component drift, aging, fiber plant maintenance and many other factors. Moreover, we are far from being able to simply "plug-and-play" an optical node into an existing network in such a way that the network itself can allocate resources to ensure error-free transmission. Optical performance monitoring could potentially enable higher stability, reconfigurability, and flexibility in a self-managed optical network. This paper will describe the specific fiber impairments that future intelligent optical network might want to monitor as well as some promising techniques.