Claims
- 1. In a communications network employing wavelength division multiplexing comprising a plurality of nodes, and an optical transmission medium interconnecting said nodes via individual links, a method of optimizing the individual link performance (received signal quality, power level, bit error rate) between any communicating nodes in the network comprising sending data over maintenance channel links.
- 2. In a communications network employing wavelength division multiplexing comprising a plurality of nodes and an optical transmission medium interconnecting said nodes via individual links, a method of determining whether a data channel is carrying valid traffic or noise comprising verifying the consistency of the bit rate of the data channel.
- 3. In a communications network employing wavelength division multiplexing comprising a plurality of nodes, and an optical transmission medium interconnecting said nodes via individual links, a method of determining whether pulse retiming is required and controlling a frequency agile clock recovery and jitter filter circuit comprising measuring the bit rate of a data channel.
- 4. A traffic node for a wavelength division multiplexed WDM optical network, comprising:
a maintenance channel modulator for superimposing a pilot tone over an outgoing data channel, for transmitting maintenance data regarding said data channel to a receiving node; and a maintenance channel processor for extracting said maintenance data from an incoming data channel received from a sending node.
- 5. A traffic node as claimed in claim 4, wherein said maintenance channel processor measures the error performance for said pilot tone to obtain a measure of performance of said incoming data channel.
- 6. A traffic node as claimed in claim 5, wherein said pilot tone is independent on the protocol used for said data channel.
- 7. A traffic node as claimed in claim 5, wherein said maintenance channel processor transmits a corrective control signal to said sending node whenever said measure of performance indicates a degradation of said data channel.
- 8. A traffic node as claimed in claim 5, wherein said maintenance channel processor further comprises a switch which selects an alternative route for said data channel whenever said measure of performance indicates a degradation beyond correction.
- 9. A traffic node as claimed in claim 5, wherein said maintenance channel processor further comprises a status reporting function.
Parent Case Info
[0001] This is a divisional application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/372,576, filed Aug. 12, 1999, which is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/917,784, filed Aug. 27, 1997.
Divisions (2)
|
Number |
Date |
Country |
Parent |
09372576 |
Aug 1999 |
US |
Child |
09730549 |
Dec 2000 |
US |
Parent |
08917784 |
Aug 1997 |
US |
Child |
09372576 |
Aug 1999 |
US |