Measuring the Transceiver’s Back-to-Back BER-OSNR Characteristic Using Only a Variable Optical Attenuator

We propose a transceiver back-to-back BER-OSNR characterization method that requires only a single VOA; it leverages the receiver SNR degradation caused by received power attenuation. Experiments using commercial transceivers show that the measurement error is less than 0.2 dB in the Q-factor.