Patent ID: 7076169

Claim:
An optical communication receiver comprising: an optical splitter having a splitter input and a plurality of splitter outputs, the optical splitter configured to receive an optical channel signal comprising a number K subchannel signals, and output K identical received channel signals; K subchannel receivers, the subchannel receiver comprising optical and digital circuitry configured to receive the k th of said K identical received channel signals and a reference light beam having a subchannel frequency f k , and output a first digital signal representative of in-phase and quadrature components of a first orthogonal polarization component associated with the subchannel frequency f k , and also output a second digital signal representative of in-phase and quadrature components of a second orthogonal polarization component associated with the subchannel frequency f k , the first and second digital signals containing information representative of a data stream used to modulate the k th subchannel frequency; and a receiver processor configured to receive said first and second digital signals and output said data stream.