Dispersion monitoring in high-speed optical communication systems

Optical performance monitoring (OPM) is a potential mechanism to improve control of transmission and physical-layer fault management, which is essential for the operation of complex wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission and switching systems. On the physical layer, the most important characteristics need to be monitored are chromatic dispersion (CD) and polarization mode dispersion (PMD). In this talk, we will review our dispersion monitoring techniques and their potential for enabling higher stability, reconfigurability, and flexibility in self-managed smart optical networks.