Analysis and Identification of Fast Transients in Optical Networks

Fast power transients in optical networks (ON) occur due to the addition and/or removal of wavelength channels during the optical network reconfiguration. These transients may result in perturbations of the ON operation regime and essential deterioration of its performance. Even comparatively small perturbations may become critical growing rapidly in a cascaded Erbium doped optical amplifiers (EDFA). An adequate quantitative analysis of fast power transients is necessary for the efficient functioning of ONs. Recently, we proposed a generic method for automatic detection and classification of transient signals in ONs based on the wavelet network (WN). The proposed method combines the advantages of the wavelet transform (WT) and artificial neural networks (ANNs). In this work, we applied the WN method to the analysis of a large array of experimental data concerning the fast power transients in ON containing cascades of EDFAs. The proposed method makes possible a determination of the source and evaluation of any fast power transient. Comparison of the measured transients with the simulation results clearly shows an extremely high efficiency of the proposed method with an accuracy of about 90%.