Line-monitoring system for undersea soliton transmission systems with sliding-frequency guiding filters

Summary form only given. Line-monitoring (LM) systems are employed in installed undersea transmission lines to monitor amplifier status and locate faults. A LM system compatible with both optical soliton transmission using sliding-frequency guiding filters and the "continuous loop-back" approach to LM has not yet been addressed. For solitons to be employed in undersea systems, a LM mechanism must exist. We propose a LM scheme that uses a pseudo-random pattern imposed on a low bit-rate WDM soliton stream, a small fraction of which is looped-back onto the opposite fiber.