Control of Channel Power Instabilities in Constant-Gain Amplified Transparent Networks Using Scalable Mesh Scheduling

Experiments on a transparent, constant-gain-controlled amplifier ring network show that channel-power coupling can lead to instability in channel power control at add drop nodes. This instability can cause power oscillations due to competing adjustments on multiple nodes. Sequencing channel power tuning on each node is shown to result in stable power control. A distributed node scheduling algorithm that dynamically defines domains for independent node control is demonstrated through network simulations.