Guaranteeing the BER in transparent optical networks using OOK signaling

A network consisting of transparent optical nodes (TONs) can provide high speed end-to-end communication paths with very low bit-error rates (BERs). However, owing to component crosstalk and other degradations at TONs, the BER of a particular communication path traversing several TONs can be degraded by a few orders of magnitude even in the absence of component failure. Monitoring the quality-of-service (QoS) of a communication path has typically relied on sporadic BER testing and operation monitoring by the nodes using probe signals. Intermittent BER testing cannot provide continuous monitoring of the network QoS. On the other hand, the use of probe signals is not sensitive enough to detect the BER degradation. This work investigates a novel approach of monitoring service degradation at individual nodes using a wrap-around device which taps and compares signals from the input and the output at each TON along the lightpath. We propose a modification using hard limiters at TON inputs and derive the BER value that this modified method can guarantee in the presence of signal degradation due to coherent crosstalk at TONs.