Optical network architecture for hierarchical modulation

摘要

The disclosed optical transport system is configured to increase the data transfer capacity per carrier wavelength, for example in a system, using hierarchical modulation for better utilization of the available BER margin. For example, hierarchical modulation may be used to reduce the number of carrier wavelengths allocated to support a given amount of bi-directional data transfer between a set of nodes in an optical backbone network. Embodiments of the disclosed optical forwarding system can be used to modify a conventional WDM system, for example by adding a configurable hierarchical layer mapper at a part of a node and allowing it to operate in a drop-and-continue mode It can be suitably configured by modifying a part of the ROADM to be formed.