Patent ID: 7424227

Claim:
An optical repeater comprising: a first optical coupler branching a wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) optical signal, including a plurality of optical signals which are at different wavelengths associated with a first optical network and which are each at a first bit rate associated with the first optical network, from the first optical network into a plurality of individual WDM optical signals which each includes the plurality of optical signals; a plurality of optical filters extracting the plurality of optical signals, respectively, from the plurality of individual WDM signals, respectively; a plurality of optical/electrical converters converting the extracted plurality of optical signals into a plurality of electrical signals, respectively; a multiplexer multiplexing the plurality of electrical signals together into a multiplexed signal; and a modulator modulating a light with the multiplexed signal to thereby output a modulated light as an optical signal to a second optical network, wherein the modulated light output as an optical signal to the second optical network has a second bit rate associated with the second optical network and higher than the first bit rate, and has wavelength spacing from other optical signals in the second optical network that corresponds to the second bit rate.