Design of Fiber-Longitudinal Optical Power Monitor

TL;DR

This paper develops analytical formulas to evaluate and optimize the accuracy of fiber-longitudinal optical power monitors, enabling better design and performance prediction for loss detection in optical fiber links.

Contribution

It introduces a unified analytical framework for assessing and designing fiber-longitudinal optical power monitors based on SNR and variance metrics.

Findings

Formulas for position-wise variance and SNR of LPM

Explicit design parameters for loss detection

Performance limits like maximum dynamic range

Abstract

This paper presents analytical results on the accuracy of fiber-longitudinal optical power monitoring (LPM) at arbitrary positions. To quantify the accuracy, the position-wise variance and power-profile SNR of LPM are defined and analyzed, yielding formulas for these metrics. Using these metrics, we show that various designs and performance predictions of LPM for a given link and estimation conditions are possible in a unified manner. Specifically, the required SNR to detect a given loss event is first presented. Based on this relation, the design parameters of LPM, such as the sample size and optical power required to detect the loss, are explicitly determined. The performance such as the detectable limit of loss events at individual positions and maximum dynamic range are also specified. These results can be used as a basis for establishing a design principle of LPM.