Patent ID: 8280257

Claim:
A reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer node with side-lobe compensation, comprising: an optical pre-amplifier comprising an input with multiple wavelengths; a wavelength selective switch connected to the optical pre-amplifier, wherein the wavelength selective switch comprises a variable optical attenuator on a connection from the optical pre-amplifier and a filter for each of the multiple wavelengths, and wherein the wavelength selective switch is configured to drop a plurality of wavelengths of the multiple wavelengths; an optical post-amplifier connected to a coupler comprising a variable optical attenuator on each of a plurality of input ports, wherein the coupler is configured to add a second plurality of wavelengths; and an optical monitor configured to monitor optical power of each of the multiple wavelengths at the optical pre-amplifier; wherein each of the variable optical attenuators is adaptively adjusted responsive to amplified spontaneous emission power located in side-lobes of each of the multiple wavelengths calculated responsive to a derived formula for a side-lobe penalty based on a micro-electromechanical system-based wavelength selective switch attenuation with the side-lobe penalty defined as a ratio of amplified spontaneous emission with side-lobe and amplified spontaneous emission without side-lobe; and wherein a gain of each of the optical pre-amplifier and the optical post-amplifier is set to a target output value plus the sum of the amplified spontaneous emission power located in side-lobes of each of the multiple wavelengths.