An optical circuit includes: a multicast-and-select (MCS) switch and multiple optical selective devices coupled to output ports of the MCS switch. The selective devices may select a single optical channel by blocking some of wavelengths of light passing therethrough and passing at least one other wavelength. The selective devices may be wave blockers or tunable optical filters. The optical circuit further includes an optical amplifying array, wherein each amplifier has an input port optically coupled to one of the selective devices. At least some of the amplifiers have pump light ports for receiving at least a portion of the pump light from one or more laser pumps or from another of the optical amplifiers, wherein the pumps are capable of providing pump light sufficient to fully saturate all of the rare earth doped optical fibers in the array.

A communication network includes a first serving area, a second serving area, a network hub, one or more trunk optical cables, and a first bridging connection. The first serving area includes a first optical switch, a first optical node, and one or more first intra-serving-area (ISA) optical cables communicatively coupling the first optical node to the first optical switch. The second serving area includes a second optical switch, a second optical node, and one or more second ISA optical cables communicatively coupling the second optical node to the second optical switch. The one or more trunk optical cables communicatively couple the first and second optical nodes to the network hub, and the first bridging connection communicatively couples the one or more first ISA optical cables and the one or more second ISA optical cables.

An optical add/drop system supporting a colorless, directionless, and contentionless (CDC) architecture includes a Contentionless Wavelength Selective Switch (CWSS)-based optical add/drop device including N local add/drop ports and M degree ports; and a channel pre-combiner including a common port connected to a first port of the N local add/drop ports and at least two local add/drop ports coupled to the common port. The CWSS-based optical add/drop device can include an M-array of 1?N Wavelength Selective Switches (WSSs) and an N-array of M?1 switches. The channel pre-combiner can be a passive device which passively combines the at least two local add ports and splits the at least two local drop ports. The channel pre-combiner can also include amplifiers on the common port in both an add direction and a drop direction.

An optical device includes a plurality of optical input ports, a plurality of optical output ports, a wavelength dispersion arrangement and at least one optical beam steering arrangement. The plurality of optical input ports is configured to receive optical beams each having a plurality of wavelength components. The wavelength dispersion arrangement receives the optical beams and spatially separates each of the optical beams into a plurality of wavelengths components. The optical beam steering arrangement has a first region onto which the spatially separated wavelength components are directed and a second region onto which any subset of the plurality of wavelength components of each of the optical beams is selectively directed after the wavelength components in each of the subsets are spatially recombined with one another. The optical beam steering arrangement selectively directs each of subset of the plurality of wavelength components to a different one of the optical output ports.

A configurable wide area distributed antenna system is provided. At least one remote master unit of the system is in communication with at least one base station. The remote master unit includes a remote switch function that provides at least multiplexing in a downlink direction, demultiplexing in an uplink direction and routing of digital samples. The local master unit is located remote from the remote master unit. The local master unit is in communication with at least one remote antenna unit used to provide communication coverage in a select coverage area. The local master unit includes a local switch function providing at least demultiplexing in a downlink direction, multiplexing in an uplink direction and routing of digital samples. At least one communication link communicatively couples the remote master unit to the local communication unit with transport media interfaces.

A terminal upgrade method and a related device are provided. The method includes: encapsulating, by an element management system (EMS), an upgrade version file supported by a type of terminal as a multicast program and storing the multicast program in a multicast server, or sending an upgrade version file supported by a type of terminal to a multicast server; establishing, by the EMS, a version-address mapping relationship; delivering, by the EMS, the version-address mapping relationship to a terminal; and delivering an upgrade start instruction to the terminal, to trigger the terminal to send a multicast program on-demand request to the multicast server, so that the terminal receives the multicast program that is stored in the multicast program storage address of the terminal and sent by the multicast server, and the terminal performs a version upgrade operation according to the received multicast program.

An optical add/drop system supporting a colorless, directionless, and contentionless (CDC) architecture includes a Contentionless Wavelength Selective Switch (CWSS)-based optical add/drop device including N local add/drop ports and M degree ports; and a channel pre-combiner including a common port connected to a first port of the N local add/drop ports and at least two local add/drop ports coupled to the common port. The CWSS-based optical add/drop device can include an M-array of 1?N Wavelength Selective Switches (WSSs) and an N-array of M?1 switches. The channel pre-combiner can be a passive device which passively combines the at least two local add ports and splits the at least two local drop ports. The channel pre-combiner can also include amplifiers on the common port in both an add direction and a drop direction.

A control system for spectral slot assignment in flexible grid optical networks determines, for a given optical path, a physical source node, a physical destination node, and physical intermediate nodes, determines the number of contiguous spectral slots to allocate for traffic on the path, identifies candidate combinations of spectral slots available for the traffic, and creates an auxiliary graph for the path. The auxiliary graph includes auxiliary links representing candidate combinations of spectral slots, virtual nodes representing pairs of neighboring physical nodes, and auxiliary links between each pair of virtual source-side and destination-side intermediate nodes representing either pass-through traffic or wavelength shifted traffic. The control system assigns cost values to the auxiliary links, determines a lowest cost combination of auxiliary links from the source to the destination, allocates the corresponding candidate combinations of spectral slots to the traffic, and configures the physical intermediate nodes accordingly.

Telecommunications switches are presented, including expandable optical switches that allow for a switch of N inputs?M outputs to be expanded arbitrarily to a new number of N inputs and/or a new number of M outputs. Switches having internal switch blocks controlling signal bypass lines are also provided, with these switches being useful for the expandable switches.

A system, method, and computer program product for booting a device are provided herein. The method includes the steps of synchronizing the device based on a downstream signal from a second device, receiving a software from the second device for booting on a reserved downstream channel of the second device, and storing the received first software in a volatile memory. The device does not pre-store the software in a non-volatile memory.