US Patent 10148348 Optical-electrical interface devices and systems with optical communication pathway redundancy

Electrical-optical interface devices and methods for use in optical communications systems are disclosed. The electrical-optical interface devices are configured to convert electrical signals to optical signals and optical signals to electrical signals, and are configured to connect to external devices. The electrical-optical interface device is configured to monitor the data transmission between external devices over a primary communication pathway. The electrical-optical interface device is designed to reconfigure itself when it receives information about a communication error so that it automatically utilizes secondary optical communication pathways as redundant optical communication pathways to maintain data communication between the external devices.