13 September 2002 -- At ECOC 2002 Sweden's Proximion Fiber Optics AB announced what it claims is a record-breaking response time of less than 1ms for its WISTOM optical performance monitor (OPM), a 10-fold improvement. This allows WISTOM to quickly identify network faults and initiate protection methods to preserve critical data, minimise network downtime as well as associated operational costs for operators.
WISTOM scans the whole C band in 0.1ms and now reports channel-specific problems within 1ms while simultaneously providing high-speed performance monitoring in less than 0.4ms per channel, accurately measuring wavelength, power, and OSNR for the entire band.
As networks become increasingly transparent, there is less need to convert signals from optical to electrical until the signal reaches its final destination. Performance measuring must therefore be done at the optical layer. Optical performance monitors become a part of a control loop that controls amplifiers and other critical network components. Improving speed, improves the performance of these control loops.
WISTOM analyses the performance of each individual wavelength channel and pin-points the problem to be resolved, ensuring Quality of Service (QoS) for network operators. Due to its fast scan time and response time as well as high performance, WISTOM provides a modular platform that can be used for applications including protection switching, fast dynamic gain equalization and long-term drift monitoring.