Patent ID: 9660729
Date: 2017-05-23
CPC Classifications: H04B,H04J,H04L,H04N

Claim:
1. An optical node in a cable communication system, the optical node comprising: an upstream RF port to couple the optical node to an ingress-mitigated hardline RF cable plant of the cable communication system, the ingress-mitigated hardline RF cable plant conveying upstream RF information via an upstream channel plan in an upstream path bandwidth of the ingress-mitigated hardline RF cable plant, the upstream channel plan including a plurality of upstream RF signals, each upstream RF signal of the plurality of upstream RF signals including an encoded carrier wave having a carrier frequency in the upstream path bandwidth; at least one RF attenuator communicatively coupled to the upstream RF port to attenuate the plurality of upstream RF signals received by the optical node via the upstream RF port so as to provide a plurality of attenuated upstream RF signals; and an upstream optical transmitter communicatively coupled to the at least one RF attenuator to receive the plurality of attenuated upstream RF signals carrying the upstream RF information and to transmit corresponding upstream optical information via an optical communication link communicatively coupled to the upstream optical transmitter, wherein: the at least one attenuator of the optical node has an attenuation value to significantly mitigate substantial distortion of the upstream optical information transmitted by the upstream optical transmitter such that the upstream optical information is an effective copy of the upstream RF information; each upstream RF signal of the plurality of upstream RF signals is modulated, using quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), with voice and/or data information constituting at least some of the upstream RF information; the plurality of upstream RF signals includes a first upstream RF signal defining a first upstream physical communication channel of the upstream channel plan in the upstream path bandwidth, the first upstream RF signal having a first carrier frequency of greater than or equal to approximately 5 MHz, and less than or equal to approximately 19.6 MHz; at least some of the plurality of upstream RF signals have different carrier frequencies to respectively define a plurality of upstream physical communication channels constituting the upstream channel plan in the upstream path bandwidth; the plurality of upstream physical communication channels occupy a substantial portion of the upstream path bandwidth; the upstream path bandwidth includes carrier frequencies in a range of from approximately 5 MHz to at least approximately 42 MHz; the upstream channel plan includes at least four physical communication channels respectively defined by upstream signals having a QAM modulation order of at least 64; the first carrier frequency of the first upstream RF signal is greater than or equal to approximately 5 MHz, and less than or equal to approximately 16.4 MHz; and the first upstream RF signal has a QAM modulation order of at least 32.