Patent ID: 7295783

Claim:
A long haul optical span comprising: a plurality of multiwavelength digital 3R regeneration (REGEN) sites spatially positioned along the optical span; each of said REGEN sites comprising at least two monolithic semiconductor photonic integrated circuit (PIC) chips each comprising an optical receiver photonic integrated circuit (RxPIC) and an optical transmitter photonic integrated circuit (TxPIC); each of said TxPICs comprising, in integrated form on each single chip, an array of modulated sources, each source comprising a laser source and a corresponding electro-optic modulator, together for providing modulated channel signals, and an optical wavelength-selective combiner comprising an arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) and optically coupled to receive the channel signals and provide a wavelength-selectively combined multiplexed channel signal on a chip output; each of said RxPICs comprising, in integrated form on each chip, an optical wavelength-selective decombiner comprising an arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) having an input to receive a combined multiplexed channel signal and wavelength-selectively decombine the multiplexed channel signal into a plurality of channel signals, and a plurality of photodetectors each optically coupled to receive one of the channel signals and convert the same into an electrical signal; said at least two semiconductor photonic integrated circuit chips coupled to regeneration and cross-connect circuits where the demultiplexed electrical channel signals from one of the chips, having been received from the optical span are wavelength-selectively decombined and converted into electrical signals, are regenerated and at least some of the regenerated channel signals are cross connected to the other chip and converted into optical signals and wavelength-selectively combined for further transmission on the optical span.