Optical communications system and method.

摘要

An optical communications system (10) suitable for wide area communications includes a plurality of local networks (LN1, LN2) each having a communications bus (B1, B2) and a plurality of terminal devices (TDo, TDn) coupled to the respective local network communications bus for intranetwork communications with other terminal devices within the local network or internetwork communications with terminal devices in other local networks. Each terminal device includes a channel selecting device for selecting one of a plurality of frequency distinct communication channels. Each local network is assigned a common set of communication channels for communications within the local network and is also assigned a unique subset of communication channels for internetwork communications. Each local network is coupled to every other local network through a frequency selective coupling means (CP1-2) that passes only information signals at frequencies corresponding to the unique subset of communication channels for that local network.