Patent Document ID: 8761610
Application ID: 11328810
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for the performance analysis of fiber optic networks, the method comprising: performing signal propagation modeling for a fiber optic network of interest by: providing a computer with signal propagation modeling data related to the fiber optic network of interest for calculation of impairments; separating the fiber optic network into a plurality of segments comprising individual non-overlapping segments defined by one or more optical add/drop placements; performing an optical line amplifier (OLA) chain analysis on the computer of each of the plurality of segments based upon the modeling data; performing an impairment analysis on the computer of each of the plurality of segments based upon the statistical modeling data associated with fibers on each of the plurality of segments to provide a signal propagation model through the fiber optic network of interest, wherein the impairment analysis is performed separately for each of the plurality of segments; calculating, using software resident in a computer, the impairments for a signal in the fiber optic network based upon the impairment analysis of each of the plurality of segments, wherein, if the signal traverses more than one of the plurality of segments, calculating the impairments for the signal as a concatenation of the impairments for the more than one of the plurality of segments; and if impairments of one segment of the plurality of segments change, reapplying the one or more concatenation rules only adjusting the one segment to compute a revised overall impairment.