Monitoring optical network performance degradation due to amplifier noise.

The relationship between optical performance as monitored within a network and the end terminal optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) and bit error ratio (BER) is measured for the case of performance degradation due to amplified spontaneous emission noise. Measurements on 10-Gb/s signals reveal that performance monitoring sensitivity to OSNR levels of 26 dB is sufficient for identifying degradations that impact the end terminal BER. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]