Reconfigurable branching unit for submarine optical communication networks

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9106983-B2
Application number	US-201313855384-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 2, 2013
Priority date	Apr 2, 2012
Publication date	Aug 11, 2015
Grant date	Aug 11, 2015

Abstract

Methods and systems for optical communication in a submarine network are provided. An input signal is received from a terminal at a reconfigurable branching unit (BU), and the input signal is split into at least two parts, with one part being associated with one or more trunk terminals and another part being associated with one or more branch terminals. Each of one or more spectrum channels are selected and individually switched to one of a plurality of paths using at least one wavelength selective switch (WSS), with the at least one WSS being configured to transmit the one or more spectrum channels to their respective target output port and to combine signals switched to a specific port into a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) signal. Individual spectrum channels are filtered out using at least one wavelength blocker (WB).

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for optical communication comprising:
receiving an input signal from a terminal at a reconfigurable branching unit (BU);
splitting the input signal into at least two parts, with one part being associated with one or more trunk terminals and another part being associated with one or more branch terminals;
selecting and individually switching each of one or more spectrum channels to one of a plurality of paths using at least optical wavelength sel…

Assignees

• Nec Lab America Inc
• Nec Corp

Inventors

• Ji Philip N
• Aida Ryuji
• Wang Ting

Classifications

• H04Q11/0005 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L12/28

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04Q2011/0016

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04Q11/00

  Electricity · mapped topic