FIELD RECONFIGURABLE LINE CARDS FOR AN OPTICAL TRANSPORT SYSTEM

摘要

A field reconfigurable muxponder (10) for use in an optical transport system. The muxponder (10) includes one or more tributary cards (12), where each tributary card (12) is adapted to receive an optical data signal (21) and conditions the optical data signal into an intermediate data signal (25) constituted in accordance with a tributary interface format. In this way, the muxponder (10) is able to aggregate optical data signals having different protocols and/or different data rates. The muxponder (10) further includes a chassis (14) that is adapted to receive a predefined number of tributary cards (12) and outputs an optical system signal (29) independently from the availability of the optical data signals from the tributary cards. The tributary cards (12) and the chassis (14) integrally form one line card.