Protection of Gigabit-Ethernet systems by Q-factor estimation and its implementation

Abstract A Gigabit-Ethernet system gains growing interest recently since it provides optical link with Ethernet traffic without protocol conversion or additional overhead cells. But, one of the problems that make the wide deployment of this system in telecom networks difficult is its relative low reliability, especially compared with SONET, the major telecom network systems, which restores from any system fault within 50 ms. In this study, a protection scheme suitable for the Gigabit-Ethernet system is proposed and implemented. By finding out the ratio of received signals found inside a reference window it estimates the signal quality. It is shown that the implemented protection system can restore from failure within 10 ms.