A synchronous digital hierachy based dynamic error correction technique for wavelength division multiplexing networks

Abstract

This paper proposes a new synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) based forward error correction (FEC) scheme for wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks. In this scheme, a dedicated WDM channel is used to transport the FEC redundant bits. This paper also proposes the use of error location analysis of the FEC correctable bits to identify the pattern of errors, combined with the seriousness of errors obtained from B2-byte analysis to decide as to the suitable FEC code to be assigned to the payload channels. The proposed FEC scheme is studied not only under the typical Poisson errors but also the bursty errors. Simulation results show that the proposed FEC scheme performs significantly better than the existing FEC schemes. It is also shown that the performance of the proposed FEC scheme on bursty errors is independent of the line rates, whereas the existing FEC schemes either cannot support bursty errors or degrades with line rates.