Patent ID: 6970653

Claim:
A fiberoptic system comprising: a central office; and at least one downstream station connected to said central office by a bi-directional fiber; said central office comprising a TX unit, an RX unit and a CW laser; and each said downstream station comprising an RX unit and a tunable filter, said tunable filter being placed between the downstream station's RX unit and said central office to selectively reflect a signal received from the CW laser on the bi-directional fiber back to the central office on the bi-directional fiber, such that during upstream transmission the station's tunable filter is selectively tuned to a wavelength different than the wavelength of the central office's CW laser, so that the station's tunable filter will selectively reflect light from the CW laser back to the central office, with said tunable filter being selectively tuned so as to modulate the light being reflected back to the central office, whereby an upstream transmission from the downstream station to the central office is effectively created.