Patent ID: 7542675

Claim:
An optical intensity control system for use with an optical switch providing individual signal paths between a plurality of input ports and a plurality of output ports, said optical switch having a plurality of wavelength division multiplexers for combining sets of individual switched optical signals into multiplexed switched optical signals, the system comprising: a plurality of optical splitters, each optical splitter being connectable to an output of a respective one of the plurality of wavelength division multiplexers; a plurality of variable optical intensity controllers (VOICs) for insertion into respective ones of the individual signal paths and for individually controlling the intensity of optical signals present in said respective ones of the individual signal paths in accordance with respective intensity control signals; and an equalizer connected to the plurality of optical splitters and to the plurality of VOICs, for producing an estimate of optical power of each individual switched optical signal and generating the intensity control signals as a function of the estimates of optical power.