Patent ID: 7310318

Claim:
A system for compensating dispersion and non-linear effects in an optical communications network having a plurality of transmitters, a multiplexer optically communicating with the transmitters and combining the signals into a multiplexed signal, a demultiplexer optically communicating with the multiplexer and a plurality of receivers optical communicating with said demultiplexer, the system comprising: a dispersion compensation module optically communicating with said multiplexer, said dispersion compensation module compensating for dispersion of the multiplexed signal; an optical phase conjugator optically communicating with said dispersion compensation module, said optical phase conjugator converting the multiplexed signal into a conjugate signal; a second dispersion compensation module optically communicating with said optical phase conjugator, said second dispersion compensation module compensating for dispersion of the conjugate signal; said optical phase conjugator being positioned such that non-linear effects on the multiplexed signal prior to said optical phase conjugator are compensated by non-linear effects on the conjugate signal after the optical phase conjugator, the compensation of the non-linear effects being decoupled from the compensation for dispersion of the multiplexed signal and the compensation for dispersion of the conjugate signal; an optical power monitoring device monitoring power across a plurality of channels of the multiplexed signal; an optical power spectral equalizer attenuating optical power of at least one channel to provide substantially uniform power across said plurality of channels of the multiplexed signal; a second optical power monitoring device monitoring power across the plurality of channels of the conjugate signal; and, a second optical power spectral equalizer attenuating optical power of at least one channel to provide substantially uniform power across said plurality of channels of the conjugate signal.