Optical-layer traffic grooming at an OFDM subcarrier level with photodetection conversion of an input optical OFDM to an electrical signal

摘要

A method for optical layer traffic grooming includes receiving at least two optical input signals into respective optical receivers, each optical receiver having a photodetector for converting the respective optical input signal into a respective electrical signal; a grooming processor responsive to the electrical signals, the grooming processor being a radio frequency RF processor for processing the electrical signals at a subcarrier level to produce an RF orthogonal frequency division multiplexing signal OFDM signal; and modulating the groomed RF OFDM signal at a transmitter for conversion of the groomed RF OFDM into an optical signal.

主权项

1. A reconfigurable add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) node, comprising:
one or more reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer subsystems, each configured to accept an input signal and to pass said input signal to each other ROADM subsystem for retransmission; an add/drop aggregator configured to receive the input signals from each of the ROADM subsystems and to control adding and dropping operations on the input signals; a grooming subsystem, comprising: at least two receivers, each configured to receive an input signal having one or more modulated subcarriers; each said optical receiver having a photodetector for converting the respective optical input signal into a respective electrical signal; a grooming processor configured to arrange the modulated input subcarriers at the subcarrier level into one or more modulated output subcarriers according to a grooming operation such that the modulated subcarriers are not demodulated or decoded prior to grooming, said grooming processor being a radio frequency RF processor for processing the electrical signals at a subcarrier level to produce an RF orthogonal frequency division multiplexing signal OFDM signal; and a transmitter FOR modulating the groomed RF OFDM signal by conversion of the groomed RF OFDM into an optical signal.