Physical impairment of monitoring trails in all optical transparent networks

In recent years, following the deployment of WDM networks, fault detection and localization has become a challenging issue in networks with high reliability. Optical layer monitoring schemes based on monitoring trail (m-trail) is considered a promising approach localizing single link failure unambiguously in all optical networks. Although the extensive works on the m-trail concept, the issue has not been validated from the feasibility point of view. Previous works on the m-trail monitoring scheme have focused on algorithm design for minimizing the number of monitors, however, none of them has observed the physical limitations. In this paper, we investigate the physical constraints on launching m-trails, mainly focusing on the maximum length each m-trail may have. Numerous simulations were implemented in VPI Transmission Maker Simulation Tool for observing qualitative parameters in different m-trail length. In our simulation, we could validate the feasibility of 15000 km long m-trails when out-of-band monitoring is used.