Example embodiments of the present invention relate to an optical signal processor comprising of at least one wavelength processing device, a plurality of optical amplifying devices, and a least one field programmable photonic device.

A network management device monitors an optical network that is configured for a required bandwidth. The optical network includes multiple optical nodes and a plurality of light paths between the multiple optical nodes. The multiple optical nodes include transport cards with a majority of the transport cards provisioned as active cards to receive a traffic load of up to full capacity of the transport cards, and with a minority of the transport cards provisioned as floating spare cards for the active cards. The network management device identifies an unused first floating spare card and an unused second floating spare card in a pair of the multiple optical nodes and automatically provisions, by the network management device, the first floating spare card and the second floating spare card to service a light path for best-effort traffic between the pair of the multiple optical nodes.

Wavelength division multiplexing technology in which a layer of arrayed waveguides is used to extend the number of ports of wavelength selective switches used in multiplexing and/or demultiplexing the optical signals transported over the optical network. In some examples, the wavelength division multiplexing technology is used as part of an optical signal communication system, such as between data centers or as part of a larger network.

An optical transport network (OTN) node including a plurality of optical circuit switches (OCSs), each OCS being a respective degree of the OTN node, at least two of the OCSs including an input port configured to be connected to a respective optical transport fiber outside of the OTN node, at least one first output port connected to a first switching layer, and at least one second output port connected to a second switching layer. The first and second switching layers have different levels of granularity, such as but not limited to a wavelength switched layer, a band switched layer or a fiber switched layer.

A network component comprising at least one processor configured to implement a method comprising collecting wavelength availability information associated with a wavelength switched optical network (WSON), receiving a path computation request to transport a signal through the WSON, calculating at least one route through the WSON for the signal, and assigning at least one wavelength for the signal to use along the route. Also disclosed is a network comprising a first path computation element (PCE) configured to compute at least one route for a signal between a source and a destination, and a second PCE in communication with the first PCE, wherein the second PCE is configured to receive the route from the first PCE and assign at least one wavelength to the route.

Dynamic restoration involves routing and bandwidth assignment of an unplanned restoration path in a wavelength switched optical network (20), having regeneration nodes (60), nodes each having a ROADM (62) having drop paths and add paths. An electrical switch (68) provides configurable regeneration capacity by coupling selected drop paths to selected add paths. Some of the configurable regeneration capacity is kept for unplanned restoration paths. A PCE determines (120) routing and bandwidth assignments for an unplanned restoration path for the traffic flow to avoid a fault, and sends (130) configuration messages to the nodes to set up the unplanned restoration path dynamically and to configure the electrical switch to provide regeneration on the path. Keeping some reconfigurable regeneration capacity enables much longer unplanned paths to be found to avoid faults, and enables wavelength conversion if needed. Thus the reliability of finding at least one path avoiding the fault can be increased.

Apparatus for an optical communications network has optical paths for optical traffic, and optical ports, one of which is an unused output port. A security monitoring system has a blocking part coupled removably to the unused output port to occupy it to prevent unauthorized access. An optical detector can detect optical signals passing through the unused output port to the blocking part, and there is alarm circuitry configured to output an alarm signal based on the detecting of the optical signals. This monitoring can help make the node more secure from interference or from eavesdropping. By blocking the port, the monitoring can be independent of the type of signals on the optical paths. The system can be passive or active, and does not require a change in the installed node configuration and so can be added easily to existing infrastructure.

Data center interconnections, which encompass WSCs as well as traditional data centers, have become both a bottleneck and a cost/power issue for cloud computing providers, cloud service providers and the users of the cloud generally. Fiber optic technologies already play critical roles in data center operations and will increasingly in the future. The goal is to move data as fast as possible with the lowest latency with the lowest cost and the smallest space consumption on the server blade and throughout the network. Accordingly, it would be beneficial for new fiber optic interconnection architectures to address the traditional hierarchal time-division multiplexed (TDM) routing and interconnection and provide reduced latency, increased flexibility, lower cost, lower power consumption, and provide interconnections exploiting NMD Gbps photonic interconnects wherein N channels are provided each carrying M wavelength division signals at D Gbps.

A colorless, directionless ROADM includes a pair of contentioned add and drop wavelength-selective optical switches, an input wavelength-selective optical switch having one input port, and an output wavelength-selective optical switch having one output port. Unintended input-to-output port couplings, which appear in the contentioned add and drop switches, can be mitigated by the input and output wavelength-selective optical switches carrying the through traffic.

A multi-layer network planning system can determine a set of regenerator sites (RSs) that have been found to cover all paths among a set of nodes of an optical layer of a multi-layer network and can determine a set of candidate RSs in the optical layer for use by the links between a set of nodes of an upper layer, wherein each RS can be selected as a candidate RS for the links. The system can determine a binary path matrix for the links between the set of nodes of the upper layer. The system can determine a min-cost matrix that includes a plurality of min-cost paths. The system can determine a best RS from the set of candidate RSs and can move the best RS from the set of candidate RSs into the set of RSs for the links. The system can then update the binary path matrix.