This document provides test procedures to measure the dispersion power penalty in a single-mode optical fiber communications system. The power penalty is measured using the maximum dispersion (ps/nm) the system is designed to accommodate as specified by the manufacturer. The power penalty is measured at the manufacturer-specified Bit-Error Ratio (BER) performance level (typically l0⁻¹⁰).

NOTE: To achieve large amounts of dispersion with relatively short lengths of fiber, the measurement technique described in this document may involve the use of a fiber having a zero-dispersion wavelength at some wavelength region (e.g., 1310 nm, 1550 nm) that differs from the central wavelength of the system transmitter. For systems operating above about 1 Gb/s, this method may not provide an accurate measurement of the dispersion power penalty resulting from a long length of fiber which has zero-dispersion in the same region as the system wavelength.