At&t Bell Laboratories

Lucent Technologies Inc.

Vincent J Silverio

Xiang Liu

Daniel A Fishman

William A Thompson

Alan M Gordon

Jinpin Ying

Joseph M Bennett

Herbert M Zydney

An optical add/drop multiplexer (OADM) adapted to route optical signals having at least two different bit rates. The OADM has at least two sets of DWDM channels, e.g., with channels in a first set having a first bandwidth value suitable for the transmission of 10-Gb/s signals and channels in a second set having a second bandwidth value suitable for the transmission of 40-Gb/s signals. The first and second sets occupy two different spectral bands and the first set has two subsets of interleaved channels. In one embodiment, the OADM has first and second optical branches adapted to process optical signals corresponding to first and second groups of channels, respectively. The first group includes a first subset from the first set while the second group includes the second set and a second subset from the first set. Advantageously, OADMs of the invention may be used to create independent processing paths for different groups of channels. As a result, a communication system having those OADMs can be upgraded, e.g., to add a new 40-Gb/s service and/or to populate additional 10-Gb/s channels substantially without interrupting the 10-Gb/s service already in place.

Optical add/drop multiplexer having a banded channel configuration

A cartridge comprising circuitry and program instructions is added to a processor controlled telephone communication system to selectively change the operating system in accordance with the cartridge used.

Programmable cartridge telephone communication system

A memory write-enable circuit is disclosed which protects data stored in a random access memory (RAM) from erroneous write commands. The circuit is enabled, permitting write commands to RAM for a fixed time interval, only when two predetermined control signals occur within a prescribed time period. The circuit is disabled either by the elapse of the fixed time interval or by a clear signal.

Memory write protection using timers

Growing community of inventors

Middletown, NJ, United States of America

Vincent J Silverio