Abstract

Most installed DWDM systems initially operate below the designed maximum transmission capacity. During the system lifetime, more WDM channels are added and the system is gradually upgraded to the full capacity. Terminal equipment corresponding to full system capacity is therefore usually not available during the initial operation phases of the system. However, in order to confirm the system design, the full capacity performance of the system still must be verified when the system is installed. For this purpose, we developed a Transportable Optical Test Equip ment (TOTE™) technology, which can operate independently of the system bandwidth and channel spacing. The TOTE™ set-up can then be used for performance evaluation of any DWDM system. We have previously presented the basic principles of the TOTE™ technique based on a few tunable data channels accompanied by a number of fixed CW loading tones.¹ In,² a similar technique was demonstrated in a 28 nm DWDM loop transmission experiment over 3,800 km. In this work, we present a detailed verification of the performance of the TOTE™ technique in a 28 nm transatlantic DWDM field transmission experiment.

© 2002 Optical Society of America