Patent ID: 7509047

Claim:
An apparatus for processing a supervisory signal for optical network applications, the apparatus comprising: a subcarrier transmission system including a modulator, a radio-frequency (RF) source, and a first RF band-pass filter, the RF source generating a RF signal, the modulator being configured to receive a first supervisory signal and the RF signal and output a modulated RF signal based on the first supervisory signal, the first RF band-pass filter being configured to filter the modulated RF signal and output a second supervisory signal; an electrical-to-optical conversion system configured to receive the second supervisory signal and a first data signal and output a first optical signal; an optical-to-electrical conversion system configured to receive the first optical signal and output a first electrical signal, the first electric signal including information associated with the first data signal and the second supervisory signal and a second data signal; a subcarrier reception system including a second RF band-pass filter and a demodulator, the second RF band-pass filter being configured to receive and filter a portion of the first electrical signal, the demodulator being configured to receive the filtered portion of the first electrical signal and output a third supervisory signal that is substantially the same as the first supervisory signal; an optical system coupled to the electrical-to-optical conversion system and the optical-to-electrical conversion system; wherein the second supervisory signal is associated with a subcarrier frequency of the RF source; wherein the first data signal is associated with a first data bandwidth, the first data bandwidth including a first data frequency, at the first data frequency a power density of the first data signal being substantially equal to zero; wherein a ratio of the first subcarrier frequency to the first data frequency ranges from 0.8 to 1; wherein the first subcarrier frequency ranges from 2.4 GHz to 2.483 GHz.