Patent ID: 7039318

Claim:
A dispersion discrimination and compensation system, comprising: a plurality of anti-dispersive elements, each having an input for receiving a respective first multi-channel optical signal and an output for providing a respective second multi-channel optical signal, each of said plurality of anti-dispersive element being adapted to apply dispersion compensation to the respective first multi-channel optical signal in response to receipt of a respective first control signal, thereby to produce the respective second multi-channel optical signal; a front end selector (FES) having an FES output and also having a plurality of FES inputs each connected to the output of a respective one of said plurality of anti-dispersive elements, each FES input accepting a respective one of the plurality of second multi-channel optical signals, said FES being adapted to select an FES input from the plurality of FES inputs, to select a single channel in the optical signal present at the selected FES input and to provide the selected channel to the FES output; a dispersion discriminator connected to the FES output and adapted to determine a dispersion characteristic of the optical signal present at the FES output, said dispersion discriminator being further adapted to generate a second control signal indicative of the dispersion characteristic of the optical signal present at the FES output; and a processor connected to said dispersion discriminator and to said plurality of anti-dispersive elements, said processor being adapted to generate, as a function of the second control signal, the first control signal for the anti-dispersive element whose output is connected to the selected FES input, thereby to exert feedback control of the dispersion compensation applied by that anti-dispersive element.