Method and apparatus of managing bandwidth allocation for upstream transmission in a unified optical-coaxial network

摘要

A method of allocating bandwidth in a network comprising receiving a GATE message allocating a transmission time window in an optical portion of the network to a coaxial network unit (CNU) in a coax portion of the network, and generating a coax network resource map by mapping the transmission time window to communication channel resources in the coax portion of the network; and sending the coax network resource map to the CNU.

主权项

1. A coaxial line terminal (CLT) comprising:
an optical port configured to couple to an optical line terminal (OLT) via a passive optical network (PON); an electrical port configured to couple to a coaxial network unit (CNU) via an electrical network; an index table having a plurality of first entries; a buffer having a plurality of second entries, wherein a first field of the first entries is configured to store a Logical Link Identifier (LLID) of the CNU and a second field of the plurality of first entries is configured to store a pointer to at least one of the second entries; a first-in first-out (FIFO) buffer configured to store one or more data transmission start times; and a buffer management unit coupled to the buffer, the index table, the FIFO buffer, the optical port, and the electrical port and configured to:
instruct storage of the LLID in the first field; instruct storage of data transmitted by the CNU and identified by the LLID in a first register of the plurality of second entries;
instruct storage of the pointer in the second field, wherein the pointer points to the first register;instruct storage, in an entry of the FIFO buffer, of a first data transmission start time allocated by the OLT to the CNU and identified by the LLID; andtransmit the data to the OLT when an optical network timer in the CLT reaches the first data transmission start time.