Apparatus and method for distributed compensation of narrow optical filtering effects in an optical network

1. A reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer comprising:

a wavelength selective switch to filter wavelengths of an optical signal, the wavelength selective switch comprising an add port; and

a liquid crystal on silicon based optical equalizer having an insertion loss of less than 7 dB, coupled to the add port of the wavelength selective switch, to equalize the optical signal to mitigate distributed optical filtering effects experienced by different channels of the wavelength selective switch and to reduce noise degradation of the optical signal, the optical filtering effects caused by wavelength routing settings of the wavelength selective switch and a plurality of wavelength routing devices downstream of the optical equalizer and along a transmission link, wherein the optical equalizer equalizes a spectral shape of each channel of the optical signal by adjusting a frequency strength of each channel of the optical signal based on the distributed optical filtering effects to generate an equalized optical signal to transmit to the add port of the wavelength selective switch.

2. The reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer of claim 1 , further comprising:

a plurality of wavelength selective switches; and

a plurality of optical equalizers, each optical equalizer coupled to a wavelength selective switch.

3. A method comprising:

receiving an optical signal;

equalizing the optical signal using a liquid crystal on silicon based optical equalizer having an insertion loss of less than 7 dB to mitigate distributed optical filtering effects of a plurality of wavelength routing devices downstream of the optical equalizer and along a transmission link to produce an equalized optical signal, the equalizing the optical signal comprising equalizing a spectral shape of each channel of the optical signal by adjusting a frequency strength of each channel of the optical signal based on the distributed optical filtering effects experienced by different channels of the wavelength routing devices and reducing noise degradation of the optical signal, the optical filtering effects caused by wavelength routing settings of the wavelength routing devices; and

transmitting the equalized optical signal to the wavelength routing device, wherein the wavelength routing device comprises a wavelength selective switch, the equalized optical signal transmitted to an add port of the wavelength selective switch.

4. A method comprising:

receiving an optical signal from a wavelength routing device; and

equalizing the optical signal using a liquid crystal on silicon based optical equalizer having an insertion loss of less than 7 dB to mitigate distributed optical filtering effects of a plurality of wavelength routing devices, including the wavelength routing device, downstream of the optical equalizer and along a transmission link to produce an equalized optical signal, the equalizing the optical signal comprising equalizing a spectral shape of each channel of the optical signal by adjusting a frequency strength of each channel of the optical signal based on the distributed optical filtering effects experienced by different channels of the wavelength routing devices and reducing noise degradation of the optical signal, the optical filtering effects caused by wavelength routing settings of the wavelength routing devices.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein receiving an optical signal from a wavelength routing device comprises:

receiving the optical signal from a drop port of a wavelength selective switch.

6. The method of claim 4 , wherein the wavelength routing device comprises a wavelength selective switch.