Dual-time-scale simulation of dynamics and reconfiguration of fiber optical networks

We describe an approach to simulate the power transients in complex (branched, ring, or mesh) transparent fiber optical networks. Simulations are performed at two time scales: first, the signal power dynamics in Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers is modeled at (sub-) millisecond scale using statistical signal descriptions. Further, the teletraffic performance of the network, such as the bit error rate, can be investigated for selected time instances at nano-second to sub-pico-second time scale using a sampled signal model (`bit-level´ simulation). For the detailed simulation on `bit-level´, signal information and internal states of the network components are re-used form the first simulation step at (sub-) millisecond scale. To illustrate our approach, we discuss simulations of `higher-order´ transients in a ring network.