Apparatus And Methods For Mitigating Wavelength Drift In An Optical Communication Network

Abstract

An apparatus and method for mitigating wavelength drift in an optical communication network. A network node such as an OLT in a PON receives a transmission on a certain optical channel. The received signal is of course sent to a receive module for processing the data contained therein, and may be sent to an RSSI module for signal strength analysis. A portion of the received transmission, however, is directed to a wavelength control section where it is divided into at least a first path and a second path, the second path having a wavelength discriminator filter. The light propagating along each path is converted to an electrical signal and digitized for comparison by a microcontroller. The microcontroller calculates one or more power ratios and from this determines the receive signal wavelength. This wavelength is compared to the wavelength of a selected channel to determine what if any adjustments should be made.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.