Novel optical performance monitoring techniques using jittered electro‐optical sampling pulses

A novel performance monitoring technique is proposed to improve the versatility of performance monitoring by altering the sampling rate periodically. With this method, a low distortion histogram can be obtained and the convergency of the averaged Q‐factor (Qavg) with respect to the number of sampling points can be significantly enhanced. We can also obtain a higher linear relationship between Qavgand the real Q‐factor than conventional approaches can. The calculated results are independent of the difference between the data rate and sampling rate. The simulation shows that, with this scheme, smaller numbers of sampling points are needed to generate one histogram, so the estimation of the Q‐factor is much simpler and faster.