  Optical fiber links are known as the most performing tools to transfer
ultrastable frequency reference signals. However, these signals are affected by
phase noise up to bandwidths of several kilohertz and a careful data processing
strategy is required to properly estimate the uncertainty. This aspect is often
overlooked and a number of approaches have been proposed to implicitly deal
with it. Here, we face this issue in terms of aliasing and show how typical
tools of signal analysis can be adapted to the evaluation of optical fiber
links performance. In this way, it is possible to use the Allan variance as
estimator of stability and there is no need to introduce other estimators. The
general rules we derive can be extended to all optical links. As an example, we
apply this method to the experimental data we obtained on a 1284 km coherent
optical link for frequency dissemination, which we realized in Italy.
