Patent 7274875 was granted and assigned to Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute on September, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An optical channel power equalizer for equalizing the per-channel power levels of a multi-channel optical signal is provided. The channel power equalizer includes an optical spectrum measurement unit that extracts a portion of the amplified optical signal and measures the per-channel power levels of the extracted optical signal; a controller that compares the measured power levels with a predetermined reference value, and determines to output the degrees of attenuation per channel based on differences between the measured per-channel power levels and the reference value; and a per-channel optical attenuation unit that attenuates the per-channel power levels of a plurality of input optical signals based on the degrees of attenuation and outputs the attenuated optical signals as the plurality of channels.