Patent ID: 7092631

Claim:
A system for providing high connectivity communications over a packet-switched optical ring network comprising: a core optical ring having at least one node, said node being coupled to a subtending system by an optical crossbar switch; a tunable laser for generating a set of serial packets; a stacker for forming a first composite packet from said set of serial packets, said stacker coupled to said optical crossbar switch, and said stacker further coupled to said tunable laser; said first composite packet being parallel packets in a single photonic time slot, said first composite packet to be added to said core optical ring in a vacant photonic time slot via said optical crossbar switch; a second composite packet propagating on said core optical ring destined to be dropped at said node for further distribution on said subtending system via said optical crossbar switch; an unstacker for serializing said second composite packet dropped at said node, said unstacker coupled to said optical crossbar switch; and a detector for distributing said serialized packets to a further destination by said subtending system.