Non-intrusive measurement of In-Band OSNR of high bitrate polarization-multiplexed signals

The In-Band OSNR of polarization-multiplexed signals in deployed networks may be determined non-intrusively with a novel modulation-format-agnostic approach suitable for implementation in field-portable optical spectrum analyzers. This approach advantageously makes use of available optical taps in the network for simultaneous measurement of all the channels of a high-bandwidth DWDM system. We have confirmed the validity of this approach using measurements acquired on polarization-multiplexed signals in representative high-bandwidth network testbeds.

► In-Band OSNR measurement technique for polarization-multiplexed signals.
► Non-Intrusive simultaneous measurement of all channels via system taps.
► Performance demonstrated on 40G PM-QPSK, applicability to 100G PM-QPSK discussed.