Australia's Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence (NICTA) has signed a commercial license agreement for its groundbreaking optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) monitoring technology.

The agreement with Optium, which is a supplier of high performance optical subsystems, is the first to exploit research in the Managing and Monitoring the Internet (MAMI) project based at NICTA's Victoria research laboratory.

The OSNR monitoring technology is compatible with optical switches, including reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs), and can distinguish and measure the impairment caused by optical amplifier noise, improving the ability to manage telecommunications networks.

NICTA CEO Dr David Skellern said the technology is the product of a number of years of work by an outstanding research team and represents the first of a number of related new technologies due to be released over the next twelve months.

The advanced features of NICTA's digital signal processing technology include its capability for 40 Gbit/sec systems across different modulation schemes on both 50 and 100GHz channel spacing.

It is ideal for the management of high-speed optical networks and operates in-band providing live information on actual performance and is faster and less complex than similar devices, according to Trevor Anderson, NICTA principal researcher and MAMI project leader.

"These advantages enable network-wide awareness and significantly improves an operator's ability to manage high-speed optical networks," Anderson said.

"The information provided by the monitor will provide additional confidence in the robustness of new high-speed networks supporting highly efficient network designs."

Optium Australia vice president and general manager, Dr Simon Poole, said the company has exclusive rights to the breakthrough technology in its WSS ROADM product line.

Poole said the embedded technology will provide customers with a true measure of the noise within the transmission bandwidth, enabling network-wide awareness and improving the management of high-speed optical networks.

Optium's optical subsystems support core to the edge applications for use in telecommunications and cable TV network systems.

The company has offices in the US, Australia and Israel.