Patent ID: 8068734

Claim:
An optical transmitter system comprising: an optical splitter having an input and a plurality of outputs, the input receiving a client signal carrying a sequence of bits, each of the plurality of outputs supplying a respective one of a plurality of client signal portions, each of the plurality of client signal portions carrying the sequence of bits; a first optical-to-electrical converter that is coupled to a first one of the plurality of outputs and converts a first one of the plurality of client signal portions into a first electrical signal, the first electrical signal carrying the sequence of bits; a second optical-to-electrical converter that is coupled to a second one of the plurality of outputs and that converts a second one of the client signal portions into a second electrical signal, the second electrical signal carrying the sequence of bits; a first data selector that receives the first electrical signal and selects a first subset of the sequence of bits, the first subset of bits being supplied to a first electrical channel; a second data selector that receives the second electrical signal and selects a second subset of bits of the sequence of bits, the second subset of bits being supplied to a second electrical channel and being different than the first subset of bits; a first electrical-to-optical converter that converts the first electrical channel to a first optical channel; a second electrical-to-optical converter that converts the second electrical channel to a second optical channel; and an optical multiplexer that multiplexes the first and second optical channels into a WDM signal.