Patent ID: 8131155

Claim:
An optical signal transmission apparatus, comprising: an optical signal transmitter unit; a variable dispersion compensator that adjusts a dispersion compensation amount to compensate waveform distortion caused by dispersion of an optical fiber; a control unit that controls the dispersion compensation amount of the variable dispersion compensator; a control mode determination unit that designates a control content of the control unit; an optical receiver unit; and a signal quality supervisory unit, wherein the control mode determination unit determines whether or not an optical signal power is within a proper range on the basis of optical power information received from the optical receiver unit, and the control unit controls the variable dispersion compensator on the basis of a determination result of the control mode determination unit and quality information received from the signal quality supervisory unit, a non-volatile memory, wherein the control unit has a first control mode and a second control mode that have different ranges of a dispersion value to be controlled and different control cycles, and has a third control mode controlled by a set value stored in the non-volatile memory, and a control set value in the first control mode or/and the second control mode is stored in the non-volatile memory and is used as a set value in the third control mode, wherein different control cycles mean different operations perfomed by the first and the second control modes.