Patent ID: 11956098
Assignee: NIPPON TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE CORPORATION
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 2:
3. A communication method comprising:
a communication scheduling step of, by a MAC (Media Access Control) unit, processing a main signal including a payload, and determining a communication timing of the main signal;
a main signal transmission step of, by the MAC (Media Access Control) unit and a communication unit, transmitting the main signal via main signal transmission line;
a control information transmission step of transmitting, from the MAC (Media Access Control) unit, communication timing data that is data of the communication timing to the communication unit via a control signal transmission line that is provided separately from the main signal transmission line; and
a communication step of, by the communication unit, performing, based on the communication timing, at least one of transmission processing for Electrical-to-Optical(E/O) converting the main signal acquired from the MAC (Media Access Control) unit and transmitting the main signal to a communication counterpart device, and reception processing for O/E converting the main signal received from the communication counterpart device, wherein the MAC unit is configured as a component that can be interchanged and the communication unit is configured as a component that can be interchanged, and the MAC unit transmits the communication timing data in a format that is different from the frame to the communication unit via a control information transmission line.