A management system configured to manage one or more optical transmitters in an optical network utilizing an optical spectrum, wherein the management system is configured to track at least one of said multiple optical transmitters by specifying a spectral position and spectral width of the portion of the optical spectrum containing a coherent optical signal generated by the at least one optical transmitter, wherein the spectral width is ‘n’ bins where n is an integer greater than 1 and each bin is a same size.