Infinera Patent Grants

Individually routable digital subcarriers

Granted: August 11, 2020
Patent Number: 10742328
Consistent with an aspect of the present disclosure, electrical signals or digital subcarriers are generated in a DSP based on independent input data streams. Drive signals are generated based on the digital subcarriers, and such drive signals are applied to an optical modulator, including, for example, a Mach-Zehnder modulator. The optical modulator modulates light output from a laser based on the drive signals to supply optical subcarriers corresponding to the digital subcarriers.…

Tunable waveguide devices

Granted: August 11, 2020
Patent Number: 10741999
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including a laser including a layer having first and second regions, the first region including a void; a mirror section provided on the layer, the mirror section including a waveguide core, at least part of the waveguide core is provided over at least a portion of the void; a first grating provided on the waveguide core; a first cladding layer provided between the layer and the waveguide core and supported by the second region of the layer; a second…

System architecture for power control in an optical transmission line

Granted: August 4, 2020
Patent Number: 10735092
An optical network is described that has a first ROADM node, a second ROADM node, and an optical transmission line establishing optical communication between the first ROADM node and the second ROADM node. The optical transmission line including an in-line amplifier node having a total input power and a total output power. The in-line amplifier node has a first monitoring tool configured to measure input optical power of the in-line amplifier node, and a second monitoring tool configured…

Method of control for the maintenance of the optical power in a ROADM network

Granted: July 28, 2020
Patent Number: 10727936
Methods, systems, and optical power controllers are disclosed. Various problems caused by the use of a single L0 power controller in the prior art are addressed by using first and second L0 power controllers with the first L0 power controller managing first optical components with the optical network, and the second L0 power controller managing second optical components within the optical network.

Hybrid optical transmitter and/or receiver structure

Granted: July 7, 2020
Patent Number: 10707965
A device may include a substrate. The device may include a carrier mounted to the substrate. The device may include a transmitter photonic integrated circuit (PIC) mounted on the carrier. The transmitter PIC may include a plurality of lasers that generate an optical signal when a voltage or current is applied to one of the plurality of lasers. The device may include a first microelectromechanical structure (MEMS) mounted to the substrate. The first MEMS may include a first set of lenses.…

Systems and methods for decoupled optical network link traversal

Granted: June 23, 2020
Patent Number: 10694271
Methods and systems are disclosed for optical network link traversal, including a method comprising the steps of receiving, by a traverser software module for an optical network, from a first node in a network link defining a path in the optical network, one or more node sets indicative of one or more of a second node also in the network link; determining, with the traverser software module, an order of traversal of the one or more node sets; traversing the network link using the…

Photonic integrated circuit

Granted: May 12, 2020
Patent Number: 10651627
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including an optical receiver including an optical source, including a substrate; a laser provided on the substrate, the laser having first and second sides and outputting first light from the first side and second light from the second side, the first light output from the first side of the laser has a first power and the second light output from the second side has a second power; and a first modulator that receives the first light and a second…

Asynchronous bias control for an optical modulator using a multiple tone detection technique with phase correction

Granted: April 14, 2020
Patent Number: 10623105
In an asynchronous optical modulation system, a drive circuit may generate a plurality of dither tones in accordance with a predetermined dither frequency ratio. Based on the components of the dither frequency ratio, the optical modulation system may be configured to determine a feedback signal magnitude component that is independent of the delay ? and a feedback signal sign component that is also independent of the delay ?. A feedback signal that is independent of the delay ? can then…

Clock recovery for digital subcarriers for optical networks

Granted: March 24, 2020
Patent Number: 10601520
Optical network systems and components are disclosed, including a transmitter comprising a digital signal processor that receives data; circuitry that generate a plurality of electrical signals based on the data; a plurality of filters, each of which receiving a corresponding one of the plurality of electrical signals, a plurality of roll-off factors being associated with a respective one of the plurality of filters; a plurality of DACs that receive outputs from the digital signal…

Heuristic constraint driven optical channel protection

Granted: March 24, 2020
Patent Number: 10602246
Embodiments herein include methods and apparatuses for providing optical channel protection by a switching controller in an optical networking system. The switching controller may receive, from a light module, a digital fault status message that indicates whether a digital frame demodulated from an optical signal include a fault. The switching controller may receive from an Optical Supervisory Channel (OSC) module, an Optical Layer Defect Propagation (OLDP) status message that indicates…

Intelligent optical restoration in integrated multi-layer networks

Granted: March 10, 2020
Patent Number: 10587500
Memory devices, methods and systems are described in which a non-transitory memory device stores instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to: receive, via an input component, at least one message from a network element in a multi-layer network comprising information indicative of at least one failure of a working path; determine based at least in part on information indicative of a data transport path coincident with the working path in a second layer in the…

Method and apparatus for transmitter IQ skew and insertion loss detection for coherent optical systems

Granted: February 25, 2020
Patent Number: 10574362
A system and method are disclosed to characterize and correct for the effects of IQ skew and insertion loss in a coherent optical transmitter. The coherent optical transmitter receives a digital data signal including in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) components and generates corresponding first and second dither signals. The first dither signal may be combined with the I component and the second dither signal may be combined with the Q component to generate I and Q combined signals, which…

Optical switching system for optical line protection in single fiber transmission

Granted: February 11, 2020
Patent Number: 10560184
Systems and methods are disclosed, including an optical switching system comprising an upstream optical signal detector between a first node and a second node configured to detect optical signals from the second node and to switch data traffic from a working path to a protecting path when optical signals from the second node are indicative of a failure in the working path; wherein the first node is configured to transmit data traffic in first optical signals with wavelengths in channels…

Optical network laser auto-tuning methods and systems

Granted: January 28, 2020
Patent Number: 10547403
Methods and systems are disclosed including a system comprising a first node, having a first transceiver comprising a first receiver and a first transmitter, comprising a tunable laser, configured to transmit a first optical signal on a first channel and to transmit a second optical signal on a second channel if the first receiver does not detect a third optical signal; a second node having a second transceiver comprising a second receiver and a second transmitter configured to transmit…

Multi-layer mechanisms to optimize optical transport network margin allocation

Granted: January 21, 2020
Patent Number: 10542336
A method and apparatus for optimizing optical transport using a software defined network (SDN) controller are disclosed herein. The SDN controller may define a margin optimization function based on at least one optical system performance metric. The function may include at least one related initiation criterion. Further, the SDN controller may collect at least one measurement for the performance metric. The measurement may include an assessment of deployed carriers not carrying client…

Techniques for reconciliation of planned network with deployed network

Granted: December 24, 2019
Patent Number: 10516579
Techniques are disclosed herein for reconciling planned data for a network (such as a fiber optic network) with data describing the deployed network. Network probing and planning components obtain a snapshot of the deployed network and organize the snapshot into three “layers”: the “link layer,” which represents the physical links that underlie the network, the “digital layer,” which includes optical channel groups that divide the total capacity of the physical links, and the…

FlexE GMPLS signaling extensions

Granted: December 10, 2019
Patent Number: 10505655
Methodologies and systems that pass signals between control planes of nodes within a FlexE Network also conforming to the Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching (GMPLS) protocol are described. The signals passed between the control planes conform to the GMPLS protocol and comprise a FlexE Ethernet Group Number and identify at least one Ethernet PHY conforming to the requirements of IEEE 802.3-2015. The Flexible Ethernet Group Number and the at least one Ethernet PHY are stored in…

Reduced power dissipation optical interface using remote lasers

Granted: December 3, 2019
Patent Number: 10498478
Methods, systems, and devices for implementing optical interface and multiplexing devices. An input optical signal is received over an input fiber by an optical interface device. A modulated optical signal and an unmodulated optical signal are demultiplexed from the input optical signal, the unmodulated optical signal is modulated based on a data signal to generate an output optical signal; and the output optical signal is transmitted over an output fiber. A modulated optical signal is…

Dynamic allocation of network bandwidth

Granted: November 26, 2019
Patent Number: 10491542
A method and apparatus for the efficient dynamic allocation of additional bandwidth in an optical virtual private network (OVPN) are described herein. A software defined network (SDN) controller may receive a request from an end-user of an OVPN for active bandwidth. Then, the SDN controller may determine whether the OVPN requires additional bandwidth to satisfy the request. As of the request, the additional bandwidth may be pre-deployed, but not yet activated for use. In an example, a…

Etalon-based wavelength locking apparatus and alignment method

Granted: November 12, 2019
Patent Number: 10476230
Consistent with the present disclosure, an apparatus for producing a control signal for a laser source is provided, comprising an etalon configured to receive light from the laser source and control circuitry that provides the control signal, wherein the control signal is indicative of a comparison of (a) a difference between a forward transmission signal of the etalon and a backward reflection signal of the etalon and (b) the light received by the etalon from the laser source.…