Apparatus and Method For Monitoring Signal Quality of a Modulated Optical Signal
AssigneeADVA Optical Networking SE
InventorsMohammad Alfiad, Sorin Tibuleac
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A transmitter with at least one optical modulator adapted to modulate the optical signal output by a laser source to generate a modulated optical signal, wherein the optical signal output by the laser source is tapped and supplied to a monitoring circuit comprising an optical front end configured to select signal components of the tapped modulated optical signal and to convert the selected signal components of the tapped modulated optical signal into analog signals, and comprising at least one analog-to-digital converter, ADC, adapted to perform equivalent-time sampling of the analog signals to provide digital signals processed by a processing unit to monitor signal quality of the modulated optical signal.
Claims26
A transmitter with at least one optical modulator adapted to modulate the optical signal output by a laser source to generate a modulated optical signal, wherein the optical signal output by the laser source is tapped and supplied to a monitoring circuit, comprising:
- an optical front end configured to select signal components of the tapped modulated optical signal, via optical coherent detection, and to convert the selected signal components of the tapped modulated optical signal into analog signals;
- and
- at least one analog-to-digital converter (ADC) adapted to perform equivalent-time sampling of the analog signals to provide digital signals processed by a processing unit to monitor signal quality of the modulated optical signal.
A method for monitoring signal quality of a modulated optical signal output by a transmitter, the method comprising:
- switching continuously between different optical signal components of the modulated optical signal to extract the optical signal components;
- converting the extracted optical signal components into electrical analog signals;
- performing equivalent-time sampling of the converted analog signals to provide corresponding low-rate digital signals;
- and
- processing the low-rate digital signals to monitor the signal quality of the modulated optical signal.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.