Patent ID: 7340172

Claim:
A method for communication in a wavelength-division-multiplexed/time-division-multiplexed communication system including a plurality of nodes, comprising: generating a timing schedule for controlling wavelength-division-multiplexed/time-division-multiplexed optical transmissions; and transmitting wavelength-division-multiplexed optical signals according to the timing schedule using a fast tunable transmitter at each node in said system to provide the wavelength-division-multiplexed/time-division-multiplexed signals; wherein said timing schedule is generated by a controller by subdividing a total system bandwidth into time sequenced bandwidth regions, each of said bandwidth regions being associated with a respective channel of a plurality of channels; said timing schedule allocating at least one bandwidth region within each time period of said time sequenced bandwidth regions for communication among the nodes in the system; and wherein information of said timing schedule including channel allocations and destination nodes for all data within said bandwidth regions is provided to each node to allow each node to receive and transmit data based on said information.