| 摘要 |
A central station (24) of a cable television distribution network (10) transmits TDM frames comprising distribution information and overhead information downstream to customer terminals (26), and determines corresponding upstream TDMA frames by includan upstream frame identity in the overhead information of each downstream frame. Each terminal buffers asynchronous information for upstream transmission, and stores an upstream frame identity which it is assigned. On detecting this frame identity in the downstream overhead information, the terminal transmit a buffer queue size in an assigned time slot of the corresponding upstream frame The central station uses the queue sizes from the terminals to allocate time slots in the upstream frames to terminals, by including their terminal addresses in the downstream overhead information, for transmission of the buffered asynchronous information. The central station can also assign time slots to the terminals for transmission of isochronous information.
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