US 6529316

Analysis of U.S. Patent 6,529,316

Date of Analysis: April 26, 2026

This report provides a concise summary of United States Patent 6,529,316, including its key bibliographic details and a plain-language overview of its independent claims. A search of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database and the 2026 dockets of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) was conducted. No records of litigation involving this patent were found in the specified CAFC dockets.

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Bibliographic Information

Title	Optical network equipment with optical channel monitor and dynamic spectral filter alarms
Assignee	Bookham Inc (Current); Onetta Inc (Original)
Inventors	G. Victor Treyz, Jun Ye
Filing Date	June 12, 2001
Issue Date	March 4, 2003
Abstract	Optical amplifiers and other optical network equipment is provided for use in fiber-optic communications networks. The equipment may include dynamic spectral filters and optical channel monitors. Temperature controllers may be used to control the temperatures of the dynamic spectral filters, optical channel monitors, and other components such as erbium-doped fiber coils in optical gain stages. Control units in the equipment may provide alarms based on status information and data from the dynamic spectral filters, optical channel monitors, temperature sensors, and other components.

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Plain-Language Summary of Independent Claims

An independent claim represents the broadest definition of the invention. US Patent 6,529,316 contains three independent claims.

Claim 1: This claim describes a piece of optical network equipment that includes an optical channel monitor to measure the power of different light channels passing through it. This equipment also has a control unit that can generate an alarm if the power of any of these channels goes outside of a pre-set normal operating range.

Claim 11: This claim outlines a piece of optical network equipment featuring a dynamic spectral filter, which can adjust the properties of the light signals. A control unit monitors this filter and will trigger an alarm if the filter is operating at or near its physical limits.

Claim 20: This claim details a method for operating optical network equipment. The method involves using an optical channel monitor to measure the power of multiple light channels. Based on these measurements, the equipment can generate various alarms, such as when a channel's power is out of range, when a group of channels is lost, when the number of active channels drops below a certain threshold, or when the variation in power or gain across the channels (ripple) is too high.