Method and apparatus for chromatic dispersion equalization

Abstract

Chromatic dispersion in a transmission channel is optimized during operation of an optical communication system. An adder (42) adds a rectangular-wave voltage output by an oscillator (32) to a center value output by a center value setting section (40), and supplies the result as a control voltage to a variable dispersion compensator (16), thereby applying a perturbation to the chromatic dispersion of the transmission channel. Counters (34 and 36) count the number of errors occurring when the perturbation is applied in respectively designated directions, and their count values are compared in a comparator (38). The result of the comparison from the comparator (38) is supplied to the center value setting section (40), and the center of the perturbation is changed in the direction toward fewer or no errors.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.