Meshed protected passive optical access network structure and optical network unit structure therefore

摘要

The invention relates to an optical network unit structure for a protected passive optical access network having a meshed structure consisting of at least two central nodes 3, 5 and plurality of optical network units 11, 13, 15 comprising a western network port 17 and an eastern network port 19 adapted to receive a western or eastern optical network receive signal S RX,west , S RX,east , respectively, and to output an eastern or western optical network transmit signal S TX,west , S TX,east , respectively, the receive and transmit signals having a time division multiplex TDM structure, at least one local port 23 adapted to receive a local transmit signal S TX,local to be transmitted to the network and to output a local receive signal S RX,local extracted from a western or eastern network receive signal S RX,west , S RX,east , a western and an eastern receiver unit 108 adapted to receive the western or eastern network receive signal S RX,west , S RX,east from the respective western or eastern optical network port 17, 19, respectively, and to convert the respective received optical network receive signal S RX,west , S RX,east into an electrical network receive signal S RX,el,west , S RX,el,east , a western and an eastern transmitter unit 106 adapted to receive a western or an eastern electrical network transmit signal S TX,el,west , S TX,el,east , respectively, and to convert the respective received electrical network transmit signal S TX,el,west , S TX,el,east into the respective optical network transmit signal S TX,west , S TX,east , and a control unit 110 adapted to make a selectable bidirectional communication between the at least one local port 23 and a further network unit possible via either the western or the eastern network port 17, 19 and to provide a pass-through communication between the western and eastern network port 17, 19 by processing the electrical network receive signals S RX,el,west , S RX,el,east and the local transmit signal S RX,local and by creating the local receive signal S RX,local and the western and eastern electrical transmit signals S TX,el,west , S TX,el,east either according to a symmetric TDM transmission scheme or according to an asymmetrical TDM scheme, the TDM transmission scheme for the western electrical network receive and transmit signals S RX,el,west ; S TX,el,west being independently selectable from the TDM scheme for the eastern electrical network receive and transmit signals S RX,el,east ; S TX,el,east . Further, the invention relates to a passive optical access network structure consisting of an arbitrary number of star domains and linear domains using optical network units having a corresponding structure.