Monitoring of OSNR by using a Mach–Zehnder interferometer

Abstract

Abstract We introduce a novel technique to monitor the optical signal‐to‐noise ratio (OSNR) using a Mach–Zehnder interferometer. The error of the novel method is less than 0.5 dB when the OSNR is between 10 and 40 dB in the best working case. In practice, the dynamic range reduces to 10–30 dB because of the influence of polarization, crosstalk, and signal bit rate. The key advantage of this method is its low cost. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 30: 63–65, 2001.