US Patent 9871582 Optical channel telemetry

A method for performing optical channel telemetry. The method may include generating various channel estimates of an optical channel, wherein the channel estimates are generated by an optical detector. The method may further include determining, from the channel estimates, various channel properties regarding the optical channel. The method may further include determining, using a summarization function and the channel properties, a channel summary that describes a portion of the optical channel during a predetermined period of time. The predetermined period of time corresponds to a processor interval of a computer processor. The method may further include transmitting, over a network, the channel summary to an optical network controller.