Patent ID: 7154914

Claim:
In an optical fiber communications system, a method for maintaining jitter tolerance of data transmitted across the communications system, the method comprising: receiving a tributary complying with a jitter tolerance; recovering data from the tributary; receiving a reference clock; retiming the recovered data according to the reference clock; converting the recovered data into at least two intermediate-speed data channels, wherein each intermediate-speed data channel is timed by a first clock based on the reference clock; converting each intermediate-speed data channel into at least two low-speed data channels, wherein the low-speed data channels in aggregate contain the recovered data and each low-speed data channel is timed by a second clock based on the reference clock; modulating each low-speed data channel to generate a corresponding low-speed symbol channel; and frequency division multiplexing the low-speed symbol channels to produce an electrical high-speed channel for transmission in optical form across the communications system.