Impact of Higher Order Impairments on QoS Aware Connection Provisioning in 10 Gbps NRZ Optical Networks

Invent of the optical amplifier has increased the data traffic being carried by each fiber such that even a brief disruption could result in enormous data loss. As we are moving towards transparent networks, connection provisioning is becoming quite challenging task due to additive nature of physical layer impairments and decreased O-E-O conversions taking place inside the routes. In static connection provisioning, the cost function representing the signal quality must consider not only the linear impairments but also, the effect of higher order impairments as they significantly influence the quality of transmission. Present work describes the design of a system with capability to consider the effect of higher order impairments on OSNR (optical signal to noise ratio) and BER (bit error rate) for connection provisioning in optical networks with the focus on comprehensiveness, transparency, and scalability of the system. The processing is carried out in time domain by offline digital signal processing using eye diagram analysis.