Line terminating equipment in sdh networks, using forward error

Abstract

In an optical transmission system applicable to a SDH network, communication between two line terminating equipments is performed in a form of a STM frame composed of a SOH field and a payload, which is determined by CCITT recommendations. The line terminating equipment provides a FEC circuit which is preferably arranged at a location between MSP and MST function blocks. The FEC circuit is designed to perform coding/decoding operations, using a cyclic Hamming code, directly on each AU-4 message derived from the STM frame. Otherwise, the FEC circuit performs operations on each k-bit interleaved AU-4 message (where `k` is an integer larger than 1). Check bits generated by a FEC coding circuit are written into undefined byte areas in a MSOH field, and error correcting is performed at a decoder circuit on the basis of embedded check bits, therefore FEC operations are performed within a multiplex-section layer. A FEC processing circuit is constituted by shift registers each of which is connected by exclusive-or logic so as to execute FEC processing calculation generating a remainder by a generator polynomial. For a FEC code on direct AU-4 message, the FEC processing circuit in parallel configuration for lowering an operational clock rate is determined by a matrix form calculation, which creates an output vector indicating a set of shift registers' data in a future clock timing from an input vector consisting of data stream in message and initial shift registers' values.