COMMUNICATION NETWORK FOR TRANSMITTING AND RESTORING AN OPTICAL SIGNAL

摘要

A communication network for transmitting and restoring an optical signal in a data optimized optical ring is presented. The optical ring includes nodes, each containing an optical cross connect switching fabric that is coupled to a data switch. The optical cross connect switching fabric and the data switch may further be coupled to a short reach side of at least one wavelength translation device and a long reach side of the wavelength translation device is coupled to a dense wave division multiplex coupler. Each node includes at least one protect channel and at least one working channel for transporting the optical signal. The data optimized optical ring is adapted to carry extra optical signals, which are unprotected and un-restored low priority signals. By concurrently transporting and processing the extra optical signals and the regular optical signals, the network's capacity is increased resulting in greater traffic utilization.