OTTAWA, and MARIETTA, Ga. -- Optelian, a trusted designer and manufacturer of optical transport systems, today announced the availability of automatic power balancing for DWDM networks. This major breakthrough enables automatic power measurement and adjustment, eliminating the need for a technician to travel to every node in a network with optical spectrum analyzers, thereby significantly reducing costs.

Whenever new channels are added to a DWDM system, the optical power levels of existing channels are affected, mainly due to spectral gain variation in optical amplifiers that results from changes in channel loading. Optical power levels of new and existing channels must be balanced to prevent channel power disparities within the system that can lead to degraded or failed optical connections. The more amplifiers in the system, the bigger this problem is. Until now, technicians often needed to travel to every node in a network, bringing expensive optical spectrum analyzers to measure optical power levels across all the channels and make any required adjustments to attenuation. With this new capability from Optelian, optical power levels are continuously and automatically measured and adjusted at all network nodes without any technician involvement.

“The great advantage of Optelian’s power balancing capability is its cost effectiveness and ease of implementation,” said Dave Mills, VP Sales at Optelian. “It pays for itself very quickly when there is growth or change on any multi-node DWDM network, especially when the network spans a large geographic area.”

Optelian