Abstract: Systems and methods for stabilizing power levels from excessive oscillations in an optical line system of a communications network are provided. A method, according to one implementation, includes the step of detecting a perturbation of an optical power level in an optical line system having a plurality of cascaded optical power controllers. The method also includes the step of determining an estimated location to which a power controller of the plurality of cascaded optical power controllers is positioned downstream of the perturbation with respect to other power controllers of the plurality of cascaded optical power controllers. Based on the estimated location to which the power controller is positioned downstream of the perturbation, the method also includes the step of providing feedback in a control loop to reduce the effects of the perturbation.

Abstract: Systems and methods for stabilizing power levels from excessive oscillations in an optical line system of a communications network are provided. A method, according to one implementation, includes the step of detecting a perturbation of an optical power level in an optical line system having a plurality of cascaded optical power controllers. The method also includes the step of determining an estimated location to which a power controller of the plurality of cascaded optical power controllers is positioned downstream of the perturbation with respect to other power controllers of the plurality of cascaded optical power controllers. Based on the estimated location to which the power controller is positioned downstream of the perturbation, the method also includes the step of providing feedback in a control loop to reduce the effects of the perturbation.

Abstract: The invention is a transient suppression system for use with an optical amplifier having a specifiable total output optical power. The system measures the power in a filtered electronic version of WDM signals carrying information channels at both the input and the output of the amplifier. By attenuating very low-frequency and very high-frequency components of the converted optical signals, it is possible to obtain an accurate estimate of the aggregate power of the information channels without bias due to amplified spontaneous emissions or optical service channels. The output power estimate is divided by the input power estimate to give an estimate of the gain of the information channels, which is compared to a reference gain. The larger the difference, the greater the applied change in the output optical power of the amplifier.