Patent ID: 6570694
Filing Date: 2003-05-27
Classification: H04B

Abstract:
An optical signal regenerator to regenerate an optical signal in a telecommunications network, comprising:a multiple local clock signal generator to generate a multiple optical domain local clock signal comprising a plurality of local clock signals wherein each local clock signal has a unique phase with respect to every other local clock signal in the plurality of local clock signals; an input optical signal comprising asynchronous optical packets; an optical gating element operable to receive the input optical signal, sample the multiple optical domain local clock signal for a sampling time period, and output at least one optical domain sampled local clock signal; a splitter device having multiple outputs wherein each output is assigned to a particular optical domain, and wherein the splitter device is operable to place each optical domain sampled local clock signal onto the output that is assigned to a matching optical domain; an optical to electrical converter coupled to each output that taps the optical domain sampled local clock signal and converts the tapped optical signal to a tapped electrical signal; a controller that measures an electrical energy level for each tapped electrical signal and creates a control signal; an optical switch that receives the control signal from the controller, selects one of the optical domain sampled local clock signals based on the control signal, and passes through the selected sampled optical domain local clock signal.