Attack propagation of high-powered intrachannel crosstalk in transparent optical networks

Transparent optical networks (TON) are becoming increasingly attractive, but transparency introduces security threats, e.g., intrachannel crosstalk attack, to optical networks. In this letter, three attack scenarios, i.e., attack propagation within an optical cross connect (OXC), the secondary attacker traverses successive OXCs and original attacker traverses successive OXCs, are investigated. The scenarios accompanied with gain competition attack are also simulated as comparison. Bit-error-rate (BER), and eye diagram penalties are estimated via VPItransMaker (TM). Our work proved that the attack signal will propagate intrachannel crosstalk attack to successive three OXCs but with limited two stages of optical switches in each OXC. The BER will be somewhat higher in case gain competition attack exists. The results will be useful for future managing, planning, and designing on TONs. (C) 2011 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). [DOI: 10.1117/1.3641411]