Patent ID: 7630397

Claim:
An apparatus for extracting data from virtually concatenated (VCAT) plesiochronous digital hierarchy (PDH) streams carried in a synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) signal, comprising: an SDH overhead and pointer processor coupled to a SONET network; a first telecom bus coupled to said SDH overhead and pointer processor; a second telecom bus coupled to an SDH VCAT demapper; a plurality of PDH units coupled between said first telecom bus and said second telecom bus, said plurality of PDH units providing PDH demapping and PDH frame synchronization according to a gapped clock produced by said PDH demapping to generate at least one serialized bit stream as well as providing serial to parallel conversion of said at least one serialized bit stream into bytes for supply to said second telecom bus; a signal path connecting said first telecom bus and said second telecom bus, said signal path distinct from said plurality of PDH units; and a configuration block for selectively controlling operation of said SDH VCAT demapper in one of a first mode and second mode, wherein in said first mode, bytes produced by said SDH overhead and pointer processor are supplied to said SDH VCAT demapper over said first telecom bus, said signal path and said second telecom bus, and in said second mode, bytes produced by said SDH overhead and pointer processor are supplied to said plurality of PDH units over said first telecom bus for processing and output to said SDH VCAT demapper over said second telecom bus; wherein said SDH VCAT demapper deskews members of a virtual concatenated group (VCG) associated with frames containing virtual concatenation link capacity adjustment scheme information (VLI) by selecting an acceptable delay which is less than the maximum compensable delay between members, dividing each VLI frame into chunks, assigning each chunk a number based on the multi-frame indicator (MFI) range and the number of chunks per VLI frame, and temporarily storing chunks in a memory at an address dictated by a remainder function, the remainder function operating on the acceptable delay and a respective chunk number.