The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 05, 1996
Filed:
Jan. 11, 1995
Michael A Hale, Essex, GB;
Donald E Clarke, Essex, GB;
Abstract
A communications system having a line terminal(1), a plurality of customer terminals (2), and a passive optical network for supporting traffic between the line terminal and the customer terminals. The line terminal(I) has a terminal unit (BTS(n)) for relatively narrow bandwidth traffic, and a second terminal unit (BTS(1) to BTS(n-1)) for relatively wider bandwidth traffic. A time domain multiplexer (14) is arranged to multiplex the traffic from the first and second terminal unit for downstream transmission over the network (18). Each customer terminal (2) has a first service unit for relatively narrow bandwidth traffic and a second service unit for relatively wider bandwidth traffic. Each customer terminal (2) has a demultiplexer (22) arranged to receive multiplexed downstream traffic from the network (18), and to segregate the traffic between the first and second service unit. Each customer terminal (2) has control elements for generating relatively narrow bandwidth control signals for upstream transmission over the network, the second terminal unit (BTS(1) to BTS(n-1)) of the line terminal (1) being responsive to the control signals from a given customer terminal (2) to control the transmission of the relatively wider bandwidth traffic to that customer terminal. The downstream transmission is by TDM and the upstream transmission is by TDMA.