A New Eye Mask for Seeded DWDM Transmission Links

The factors that influence the choice of suitable eye mask for a seeded DWDM link are presented. It is observed that two factors play a key role in determining the characteristics of the eye mask namely, bandwidth of the transmitter driver circuit and the transmitter RIN in conjunction with the input seed signal power. None of the well known eye masks fit well due to thicker ones level in a seeded DWDM system, so there is a need to define a new mask for this purpose. It is shown thorough measurement results that an eye mask derived from the NRZ 10G ratio small mask defined in ITU-t recommendation G.959.1 can serve the purpose.