Receiver-Based Experimental Estimation of Power Losses in Optical Networks

We propose a method to estimate the amplitude of an unexpected power loss which, leveraging on a calibration, enables the real-time monitoring of a network link. It is based on an existing fiber-longitudinal power profile evaluation technique. The reliability of the method is assessed experimentally. When the anomaly is located at 0 km from the beginning of the span, the estimation bias is smaller than 0.2 dB for losses up to 10 dB. When the anomaly is located at 25 km from the beginning of the span, the same estimation bias is observed but for losses up to 5 dB. In both cases, the standard deviation of the estimation is smaller than 0.2 dB.