A method and apparatus for setting the level of an analog signal supplied to an electronic device having a maximum input level. The method includes computing a gain which, when applied to the analog signal, causes the amplified signal to exceed the maximum input level for a percentage of time which is greater than zero, and applying the gain to the analog signal. When clipping occurs at least part of the time, the correlation result obtained for a pair of truly correlated signals remains virtually unaffected, while there is actually a beneficial effect on the correlation result obtained for a pair of truly uncorrelated signals. To determine the amplifier gain needed to attain the desired amount of clipping, the present invention capitalizes on the availability of power measurements taken from the signal before it was amplified. Reliance on feedback from the amplifier output is not required, resulting in a simplified gain computation process.
Systems and methods for reliable and low cost optical connection verification. One application is verification and monitoring of optical cross-connect performance. A connection is verified by splitting off optical signals at both ports of the connection, converting the signals to electrical signals, and then cross-correlating to verify connectivity between the ports. Lowpass filtering applied to the electrical signals may be applied to reduce the complexity of the cross-correlation.
