Minimum-Intrusion Approaches for In-Service BER Estimation in Transparent WDM Networks

Abstract

Abstract. The bit error rate (BER) is a key measure to quantify the reliability of a transmission system. In transparent networks, link bit error checks are not cost-effective. This paper proposes approaches for low-cost, real-time BER estimation with minimum opto-electronic conversions and applies them to a transparent optical networking testbed 1 .