Machine Learning Based Low-Cost Optical Performance Monitoring in Mode Division Multiplexed Optical Networks

Abstract

Real-time optical performance monitoring (OPM) is of the utmost importance in adaptive optical networks to enable awareness of channel conditions and to achieve high quality of service. In single-mode fiber (SMF)-based networks, optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) and chromatic dispersion (CD) monitoring have been extensively studied in the literature. In this work, we consider OPM in few-mode fiber (FMF) networks employing non-coherent detection. OPM in such networks is a challenging task, as FMF has an additional performance-limiting impairment over SMF, namely mode coupling (MC). Here, we propose an OPM scheme to estimate three FMF channel parameters: OSNR within the range of 8 to 20 dB, CD within the range of 160 to 1120 ps/nm, and different levels of MC. The proposed scheme uses a stacked auto-encoder (AE) to extract features with reduced dimensionality compared to the original data. These features are used to train an artificial neural network (ANN) regressor. Simulation results show that the proposed OPM scheme can accurately estimate the OSNR, CD, and MC with root mean square error (RMSE) values of 0.0015 dB, 0.28 ps/nm, and 7.88 × 10−6, respectively. The performance of proposed OPM scheme is also evaluated against different types of features commonly used in literature.