Novel time-resolved measurements of bit-error-rate and optical-signal-to-noise-ratio degradations due to EDFA gain dynamics in a WDM network

Abstract

Summary form only given. We demonstrated the usefulness of a new technique for making time-resolved measurements of BER and OSNR. As an example, we measured the OSNR and the BER of a surviving channel as the channel loading was varied by 100%. A severe drop of 5 dB in OSNR was observed despite the fact that the channel power decreased by 3 dB only.