Optical control system

• US 20040126107A1
• Filed: 12/31/2002
• Published: 07/01/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 12/31/2002
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Intelligent Photonics Control Corp.
• Original Assignee: Intelligent Photonics Control Corp.
• Inventors: Andrews, Robert, Ribaric, Zeljko, Dietz, Paul, Jay, Paul R.
• Application Number:
  US10/331,763
• Publication Number:
  US 20040126107A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 398/25
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/079 using measurements of the data signal
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/07953 Monitoring or measuring OSNR, BER or Q
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/07955 Monitoring or measuring power
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/0797 Monitoring line amplifier or line repeater equipment
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/0799 Monitoring line transmitter or line receiver equipment
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/2935 with a cascade of amplifiers

Abstract

A multi-level control system for optical components is disclosed herein. The control of optical components uses the representation of an optical component as an optical function, and the ability to represent a plurality of optical functions as a compound optical function that can be controlled by a higher level controller. Controllers of the present invention are designed to treat the controlled system as an object, so that a single controller can interact with other controllers either in a peer-to-peer, or master-to-slave relationship

Claims

1. A controller for controlling an optical function comprising:

a messaging interface for communicating with a further controller to establish a control loop governing a behaviour of the optical function in accordance with information received from the further controller.

2. The controller of claim 1, wherein the messaging interface communicates with a plurality of further controllers.

3. The controller of claim 1, wherein the optical function is determined by the operational parameters of a controlled optical device.

4. The controller of claim 1, wherein the controller controls a compound optical function.

5. The controller of claim 1, wherein the controller controls a component optical function.

6. The controller of claim 1, wherein the further controller controls an optical function.

7. The controller of claim 1, wherein the messaging interface includes a network management interface for communicating with a network management system.

8. The controller of claim 1, wherein the further controller is connected to a network management system.

9. The controller of claim 1, wherein the information received from the further controller includes information concerning further optical functions.

10. The controller of claim 1, wherein the control loop governs a plurality of sub-control loops.

11. The controller of claim 1, wherein the control loop is based on a model of the behaviour of the optical function.

12. A method of controlling an optical device having both an input and an output, the optical device controlled by an optical controller, the controller storing a model of the optical device, the method comprising:

establishing a communications link to a further controller via a messaging interface;

receiving from the further controller control information;

controlling the optical device based on the received control information and the model.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the step of establishing a communications link includes the step of transmitting a message to the further controller using one of Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Transaction Language 1 (TL1), Command Line Interface (CLI) and an extensible Markup Language (XML) based message.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein the step of receiving includes parsing one of an SNMP message, a TL1 message, a CLI message, and an XML based message.

15. The method of claim 12, wherein the step of controlling includes determining control parameters for the optical device based on the received control information and the predetermined model.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the received control information includes a new transfer function relating the output of the optical device to the input of the optical device.

17. The method of claim 12, wherein the step of controlling includes adjusting the performance of the optical device to meet constraints.