Supervision and management offuture wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) networks may be accomplished with pilot tones generated by amplitude modulation of the signal.~1 This technique is attractive as no extra light source is needed to perform, e.g., signal power supervision throughout the network. However, because optical cross connects (OXCs) deploying wavelength converters are likely to be included in an optical network layer,~2 and because wavelength converters generally have a nonlinear transfer function (in contrast to, e.g., couplers, filters, and erbium-doped fiber amplifiers), special attention must be given to how the conversion influences the pilot tones and vice versa.
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