WDM CHANNEL MONITORING SYSTEM AND METHOD

摘要

The system and method of the present invention is operative to monitor the performance of an optical communications channel. An optical splitter (14) splits a wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) optical communications signal into a low power WDM signal onto a back-up path (22), where a tunable filter (24) sweeps the optical communications channels, while a monitoring circuit (24) monitors the optical communications channels for performance. Optical power can be stored and subsequently displayed, providing an optical spectru m analysis of the signal.