Patent ID: 7409155

Claim:
An optical transmission system for performing WDM optical transmission, comprising an optical transmission device and an optical reception device; wherein said optical transmission device includes, an optical-supervisory-signal generation unit which generates a first optical supervisory signal being arranged on a shorter-wavelength side of main signals and containing information for use in determination of continuity of an optical transmission line and a second optical supervisory signal arranged on a longer-wavelength side of the main signals and used for supervisory control of optical communication, and an optical multiplexing unit which generates a wavelength-multiplexed signal by optically multiplexing together simultaneously the main signals and the first and second optical supervisory signals, and transmits the wavelength-multiplexed signal onto said optical transmission line; and said optical reception device includes, an optical demultiplexing unit which receives said wavelength-multiplexed signal, and optically demultiplexes the wavelength-multiplexed signal into said main signals, said first optical supervisory signal, and said second optical supervisory signal, and an optical-supervisory-signal reception unit which determines whether or not said optical transmission line is optically continuous, based on the first optical supervisory signal, and performs supervisory control of optical communication based on the second optical supervisory signal, wherein said first optical supervisory signal generated by said optical-supervisory-signal generation unit contains clock information as said information for use in determination of continuity of said optical transmission line, and said optical-supervisory-signal reception unit activates an APSD (Auto Power Shut Down) function based on the clock information, wherein, even when the level of the second optical-supervisory-signal varies and an error occurs in the second optical-supervisory-signal, the APSD function is not activated as long as the clock information can be extracted from the first optical-supervisory-signal, and wherein, only when said optical-supervisory-signal reception unit cannot extract the clock information from the first optical-supervisory-signal, said optical-supervisory-signal reception unit determines that a fiber failure has occurred, and activates the APSD function.