OPTICAL BAND SCANNING MONITOR SYSTEM AND METHOD

摘要

A scanning optical monitoring system and method are appropriate for high speed scanning of a WDM signal band. The system and method are able to identify dropped channels or, more generally, discrepancies between the determined or detected channel inventory and a perpetual inventory for the WDM signal, which perpetual inventory specifies the channels that should be present in the WDM signal assuming proper operation of the network. The system includes a tunable optical filter (110) that scans a pass band across a signal band of a WDM signal (10) to generate a filtered signal (114). A photodetector (116) then generates an electrical signal (118) in response to this filtered signal. A decision circuit (130) compares the electrical signal to a threshold and a controller (150), which is responsive to the decision circuit, inventories the channels in the WDM signal (10).