Patent ID: 8848743

Claim:
A method of communicating count value information in an Optical Transport Network (OTN) signal frame, the method comprising: determining a count value indicating a number of payload bytes to be sent in a next OTN signal frame; determining that a change in the count value (Δ) with respect to a current count value is within a predetermined range; selecting an inversion pattern indicating the change in the count value; determining a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) code associated with the inversion pattern; inserting a first portion of the inversion pattern in a JC1 byte of a Generic Mapping Procedure (GMP) overhead of the OTN signal frame; inserting a second portion of the inversion pattern including a single bit increment indicator and a single bit decrement indicator in a JC2 byte of the GMP overhead of the OTN signal frame, the indicators being set in an identical manner to corresponding inversion pattern bits in the JC1 byte such that the first portion of the inversion pattern in the JC1 byte is identical to the second portion of the inversion pattern in the JC2 byte, such that at least one of the JC1 byte and the JC2 byte is used to determine count value change in a receiving side; and, inserting the CRC code in a JC3 byte of the GMP overhead of the OTN signal frame; and, transmitting the OTN signal frame to communicate the count value information.