Transmission Link OSNR Monitoring Based on Data-Aided Carriers

Monitoring the optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) of optical communication transmission links is very important for optical networks dynamic operation. We propose a low-cost OSNR monitoring scheme based on data-aided carriers. In the scheme, narrowband low-power data-aided carriers are introduced at the boundary of WDM grids, achieving high precision OSNR monitoring without interfering with network transmission service. The simulation results show that the data-aided carrier with 0.1% service signal power has high estimation accuracy under different OSNR, and the estimated standard deviation is very stable, reaching 0.1.