SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR SYNCHRONIZING TELECOM-RELATED CLOCKS IN ETHERNET-BASED PASSIVE OPTICAL ACCESS NETWORK

摘要

A system and method for synchronizing clocks related to telecommunications throughout s point-to-multipoint optical network utilizes downstream data timed using a high frequency transmission clock to distribute timing information of a central telecom-based clock to remote terminals. In an exemplary embodiment, the point-to-multipoint optical network system is an Ethernet-based passive optical network (PON) system that operates in accordance with a Gigabit Ethernet standard. The timing information of the central telecom-based clock is extracted from the downstream data at each remote terminal by recovering the high frequency transmission clock and then, deriving a reference clock, which is synchronized with the central telecom-based clock, from the recovered transmission clock. The reference clock is then used to generate one or more telecom-related clocks that are needed by the remote terminal. The system and method allows telecom-related clocks throughout the system to be synchronized in an efficient and cost-effective manner.