Method and apparatus for determining a maximum transmission capacity within an optical network

A system of an optical transmission network, said system comprising:

• an amplified spontaneous emission, ASE, noise module, SSASE, adapted to provide an amplified spontaneous emission, ASE, noise spectrally shaped such that a transmission performance of an optical transmission spectrum, OPT-SPEC, provided by an optical link, OL, of said optical transmission network fully occupied with data traffic carrying channels, CHs, is matched;
• an optical multiplexing structure adapted to combine the spectrally shaped amplified spontaneous emission, ASE, noise provided by the amplified spontaneous emission noise, ASE, noise module, SSASE, of the network node with wavelengths of data traffic carrying channels,
• wherein the amplified spontaneous emission, ASE, noise module, SSASE, is further adapted to shape a power spectral density, PSD, of the amplified spontaneous emission, ASE, noise to match a linear and nonlinear crosstalk performance of the optical transmission spectrum, OPT-SPEC, fully occupied with data traffic channels, CH;
• and
• means for determining a maximum transmission capacity, TCAPMAX-OL, of the optical link, OL, as an aggregated data rate, DR, provided by the optical link, OL, on the basis of a data rate, DR, provided by a measured link data transported via at least one data traffic carrying channel, CH, and on the basis of an aggregated bandwidth, BW-CH, occupied by the respective data traffic carrying channels, CHs, and a total bandwidth, BW-OPT-SPEC, of the optical transmission spectrum, OPT-SPEC, of said optical link, OL.