Patent ID: 7233962

Claim:
A method for estimating a measure of the quality of a received signal in a computer simulation of an optical transmission system, wherein the simulation includes additive optical noise generated by components within the transmission system, the method including the steps of: a) calculating one or more sets of parameters of a first non-gaussian probability density function so as to approximate a suitable fit to the amplitude distribution of the received signal, including the effects of deterministic processing in the receiver but excluding the effects of statistical noise fluctuations introduced by the receiver; b) calculating one or more sets of parameters of a second non-gaussian probability density function that approximates a suitable fit to the amplitude distribution of the received signal, including the effects of deterministic processing and statistical noise fluctuations in the received signal using the calculated set(s) of parameters of the first non-gaussian probability density function and pre-specified statistical properties of the noise fluctuations introduced by the receiver; and c) computing the measure of quality using the set(s) of parameters of the second non-gaussian probability density function; and d) outputting the computed measure of quality.