Optical performance monitoring

Optical Performance Monitoring (OPM) is used for managing high capacity optical transmission and switching systems in Next Generation Networks (NGN). OPM is a potential mechanism to improve control of transmission and physical layer fault management.

In optical communications, typical examples for optical performance monitoring include optical add/drop multiplexing, dynamic gain equalization, system alarming and error warning.

The optical component used for this purpose is called Optical performance monitor (OPM), also known as Optical channel monitor(OCM), which measures channel power, wavelength, and optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) in optical layer.