Patent ID: 8594508

Claim:
An optical transmission system comprising: an optical transmitter that transmits an optical signal capable of transmitting multi-bit information within one symbol time and including a plurality of multiplexed transmission channels, to a transmission line; and an optical receiver that receives the optical signal propagated through the transmission line, wherein the optical transmitter comprises: a transmission signal process circuit that generates a plurality of transmission signals respectively corresponding to the plurality of transmission channels by encoding transmission information according to a preset format; a light source; an optical modulation section that generates an optical signal to be transmitted to the transmission line, by respectively modulating output lights from the light source according to the transmission signals output from the transmission signal process circuit, and multiplexing the respective modulated lights; and a characteristic average section that causes a change in a state of the optical signal transmitted to the transmission line so that characteristic variations between the respective transmission channels generated due to propagation of the optical signal generated by the optical modulation section through the transmission line are averaged over all the transmission channel, and the optical receiver is configured to receive the optical signal propagated through the transmission line matched with a state change of the optical signal provided by the characteristic average section, and to perform a decoding process including error correction of the received signal, wherein the characteristic average section is configured such that when the plurality of transmission signals are generated in the transmission signal process circuit, transmission data allocated to each transmission channel is alternated at each symbol duration corresponding characteristic variations between the respective transmission channels, to thereby average the characteristic variations between each transmission channel, and the optical receiver comprises: a light reception section which receives the optical signal propagated through the transmission line and converts the optical signal into an electric signal; and a received signal process circuit that, for the received signal output from the light reception section, re-allocates received data corresponding to an allocation of transmission data to the respective channels in the characteristic average section, and executes a decoding process including error correction of the received signal.