Patent ID: 8503878

Claim:
A method of transmitting data over a communication network, wherein a plurality of data flows are carried by respective subcarriers using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, the method comprising: classifying each of a plurality of data flows as having a respective data flow type; assigning each data flow to one of a plurality of subcarrier groups, based on the data flow's type, wherein each subcarrier group comprises a respective plurality of subcarriers; transmitting first data flows assigned to a first subcarrier group exclusively on respective subcarriers in the first subcarrier group; and transmitting second data flows assigned to a second subcarrier group together on all of the subcarriers in the second subcarrier group; wherein flow-subcarrier mapping (FSM) with said transmitting steps includes following constraints: a ) ⁢ ⁢ 0 ≤ ∑ 1 ≤ j ≤ M ⁢ I i , j ≤ M , ∀ 1 ≤ i ≤ N ; ⁢ ⁢ b ) ⁢ ⁢ ∑ 1 ≤ j ≤ M ⁢ P i , j ≤ 1.0 , ∀ 1 ≤ i ≤ N ; ⁢ ⁢ c ) ⁢ ⁢ ∑ 1 ≤ j ≤ M ⁢ ( λ * ⁢ P i , j ) < R , ∀ 1 ≤ i ≤ M ; and ⁢ ⁢ d ) ⁢ ⁢ ∑ 1 ≤ j ≤ M ⁢ λ < M * R ; where R denotes data rate, M denotes optical OFDM subcarriers, N denotes traffic flows, λ is related to traffic intensity, ij denoting i th data flow mapped to j th subcarrier and Pi,j denoting percentage of i th data flow's traffic that is assigned to j th subcarrier.