Patent ID: 8571409

Claim:
An optical ring having a plurality of nodes, each node having an output coupled to a subsequent station and an input coupled to a previous station, said optical ring supporting simultaneous communications in a plurality of separate wavelengths forming separate communication channels; each said node having: a tunable drop filter dropping a first wavelength from an optical node input and a tunable add filter optionally adding a second wavelength to said optical node output, said first wavelength and said second wavelength operative in different optical communication channels, each said tunable drop filter coupled to an optical receive detector and each said tunable add filter coupled to a tunable laser operative on a particular channel; a sensor and control interface for converting sensor data received on a particular optical channel into sensor reading outputs and also converting control input data into modulations on a particular channel, said sensor data and said control inputs having a length; a scheduling and wavelength assignment controller for placing said control inputs onto particular wavelengths and for retrieving said sensor reading outputs; and where each said node is a Colorless Directionless Contentionless (CDC) node utilizing said plurality of wavelengths operative to minimize a finish time.