Abstract

The network management and survivability in a multi-vendor, multi-operator and multi-costumer all-optical environment require the ability to measure the performance of the optical data, detected degradation and failure, and provisioning means of failure location and isolation.¹ The control and management in the optical layer imply the ability to monitor the channels without access to the information frame in the standard transmission protocols (SDH/SONET for example). Current performance monitoring requires channel termination, demultiplexing, detection, electrical regeneration and bit-stream analyzing. This method is expensive and unpractical along the transmission path due to the possible variety of signal formats and bit rates (SDH/SONET, PDH, Gigabit Ethernet, etc.). Consequently, to perform the routing and management functions directly in the optical domain requires the utiliza tion of monitoring techniques also in the optical domain. Optical performance monitor (OPM) is an approach that allows measurement of channel quality and degradation without prior knowledge of the origin, transport history or contend of the data.

© 2002 Optical Society of America