Lucent Technologies Inc.

John G Israel

William A Thompson

Gerard T Lingner, Iii

Bradley A McKay

Chu Ng

Dirk Bode

Singanallur R Thangavelu

William Czarnocha

Victor S Hyun

Prasanna R Nadhumi

John Mark Ritchey

Lasing of an optical channel at a particular wavelength is substantially prevented in an optical ring network by automatically verifying the presence of a break, e.g., termination, in the ring for an optical channel of a particular wavelength before allowing a node in the network to establish a 'pass through' connection for that optical channel. More specifically, a node attempting to establish a 'pass through' route for an optical channel received from another node is prevented from establishing the necessary connections to do so until it is confirmed that the optical channel of interest has been added to the ring or dropped from the ring at another node, thus indicating the presence of a &#x201c;break&#x201d; in the optical ring for that optical channel of interest.

Method for preventing lasing in an optical ring network

An arrangement is provided which detects the loss of a high power signal in an optical transmission path and the loss of supervisory signal power and, in response thereto, automatically invokes a procedure which causes an optical signal source connected to the fiber to reduce the power level at which it is transmitting optical signals over the fiber to a safe level. More specifically, reduction of optical signal power supplied by an upstream network element by a prescribed amount is achieved by automatically controlling the output power level of the upstream network element in response to the detection of both loss of signal power and loss of supervisory signal power at a downstream network element as a result of a fiber cut, open connector, or other potentially hazardous discontinuity.

Automatic power shut-down arrangement for optical line systems

Each of a series of optical amplifiers is arranged such that, in response to detecting particular stimuli occurring at an input or receipt of an adjustment start message from an upstream amplifier, adjusts certain amplifier parameters using small steps and completes the adjustment using large steps if it does not receive the adjustment start message within a predetermined period of time of starting the adjustment in response to detecting the stimuli. If the optical amplifier receives the adjustment start message, then it continues to perform the adjustment and completes the adjustment using large steps when it receives an adjustment done message from the upstream optical amplifier. At that point, the optical amplifier sends an adjustment done message to the next downstream amplifier if it is not the tail-end amplifier.

System based control of optical amplifier transmission functions

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Fair Haven, NJ, United States of America

John G Israel