Unconstrained signalling in the switchless WDMA/TDMA optical transport network

Limited signalling capacity imposes severe constraints on the control protocol flexibility of a national-scale WDMA/TDMA switchless optical transport network architecture. To signal the maximum number of connection requests for optical packets from the terminals within each transmission frame, out-of-band signalling in dedicated signalling wavelength channels would require at least 12 receivers in each terminal; an excessively expensive proposition. In-band meta-signalling techniques, using all of the network's available wavelength channels, together with temporal manipulation of blocks of wavelength channels by fibre delay line, ensure that the packet connectivity of a future WDMA/TDMA switchless optical transport network is completely unconstrained by any signallying limitations, at minimum cost.