Survivability of optical connections has grown into an issue of the greatest importance for WDM networks as well as for any other optical communication technology. The interruption of high-speed optical connection even for a few seconds means a huge waste of data information. Network operators have therefore to face their customer’s requirements, which are very stringent as to outage periods.
One of the most popular protection techniques is 1+1 dedicated protection, also known as self-healing. The source node splits the signal into two identical copies transmitting them simultaneously on two separate light paths. The receiver node selects the signal with the best quality.

The 1+1 Redundancy module is part of the LambdaDriver product line. The switchover time is lower than 25 ms, which is much better than the STM requirement of 50 ms. The switching is performed when the monitored link signal is below the pre-defined
optical signal threshold.
The module is fully manageable by the LambdaDriver management module and can be accessed also by MegaVision® (MRV’s webbased NMS) or any other SNMP manager. The module reports the current status of Primary/Secondary link to the management.
The module can be switched over from Secondary to Primary and vice versa by a command from management.

There is an option for having Optical Supervisory Channel (OSC) included on the module. In this case, the module includes, besides the protection function, 1310/1550nm splitting/combination.