7.2 NETWORK FUNCTIONALITY USING
PERFORMANCE MONITORING
OPM plays an important role for maintenance and man agement of high-speed
intelligent, reconfigurable optical networks. In this section, we give a brief intro-
duction of network functionality that can be enabled by using OPM.
7.2.1 Robust and Stable Operation
Many impairments on optical signals are time-varying due to a changing environ-
ment, drift of components, and rapid reconfiguration of network paths. Moreover,
the fiber impairments depend on complex interactions of linear and nonlinear fiber
effects, which in turn are a function of the signal power, data rate, and data
modulation format. These properties imply that the OPM should provide real-
time information about the quality of these