Current best practices for determining optical parameters in an optical fiber network look at equalizing the ratio of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) to signal power on channels over an optical section while respecting channel power limits to manage the fiber optical nonlinear effects. This equalization addresses the strong power tilt that can accumulate across spans of optical fiber mainly due to Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS). These methods rely heavily on offline simulations to determine good control parameters, such as peak power. This is operationally burdensome and error prone.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,438,369 describes increasing capacity by optimization after nonlinear modeling. U.S. Pat. No. 8,364,036 describes controlling optical power within domains, and exchanging state information between domains. U.S. Pat. No. 8,781,317 describes methods to measure phase nonlinearities. U.S. Pat. No. 7,894,721 describes global optical control where receiver changes are correlated to network perturbations. U.S. Pat. No. 7,457,538 describes performance monitoring using the analog-to-digital converter of the receiver. U.S. Pat. No. 7,376,358 describes location-specific monitoring of nonlinearities. U.S. Pat. No. 7,356,256 describes digital monitoring along the optical line. US Patent Publication No. 2016/0315711 describes controlling the optical spectral density in a section.