An OSNR monitor for optical packet switched networks

Abstract

Optical packet switched networks bring about new challenges to the research in optical performance monitoring. We present the first experimental demonstration of an optical signal-to-noisc ratio (OSNR) monitor capable of direct OSNR monitoring on the packet basis. By measuring the radio frequency noise from optical packets with a special performance monitoring segment, the OSNR monitoring error is found to be less than 0.6 dB for consecutive packets with varying OSNR of 16 to 27 dB. The response time of the OSNR monitor can be around 10 ns. © 2006 IEEE.