Gain equalization in metropolitan and wide area optical networks using optical amplifiers

Optical metropolitan/wide area networks with arbitrary topology usually require optical amplifiers to compensate for the fiber attenuation and splitting loss introduced by the star couplers. An amplifier placement algorithm using spanning tree traversal is proposed. Using this algorithm, the authors show that it is possible to equalize the arriving optical signals at each receiver of the network. This technique enhances other static or dynamic gain equalization schemes and presents a more effective and robust solution to the power equalization problem for WDMA networks with arbitrary topology