Patent ID: 7664403

Claim:
In an optical fiber communications system including a transmitter node coupled to a receiver node by an optical fiber, a method for synchronizing the receiver node with the transmitter node, the method comprising: at the transmitter node: generating a reference signal; synchronizing the transmitter node with the reference signal; wherein said synchronizing the transmitter node comprises adjusting the data rate of a data signal to match the rate of the reference signal; modulating the reference signal onto an optical signal in a first frequency band and modulating the data signal onto the optical signal in a second frequency band, the first frequency band being different from the second frequency band; and transmitting the optical signal across the optical fiber to the receiver node; and at the receiver node: receiving the optical signal; recovering the reference signal and the data signal from the optical signal; and synchronizing the receiver node with the recovered reference signal; wherein said synchronizing the receiver node comprises adjusting the data rate of the recovered data signal to match the rate of the recovered reference signal.