Patent ID: 7457541

Claim:
A system for integrating broadcast and communication technologies, comprising: an optical-line terminal (OLT) for receiving one or more broadcast signals and one or more external data-communication signals, for converting the received signals and for combining the converted signals in the form of an optical signal, and transmitting the optical signal according to an optical wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM); an optical-network unit (ONU) for separating the optical signal transmitted from the OLT into the one or more broadcast signals and the one or more communication signals and transmitting only the broadcast signal(s) selected by a user from said one or more broadcast signals and the communication signals, which are time division multiplexed during broadcasting without being modulated in an optical output signal from the ONU according to a predetermined continuous time slot assigned to the user for processing the broadcast signals in real time; and, a user gateway for distributing the optical output signal from the ONU to the user; wherein the ONU comprises: a WDM optical demultiplexer for demultiplexing the signal output from the OLT; a broadcast-signal processor for converting the broadcast signal demultiplexed by the WDM optical demultiplexer opto-electrically; a zapping-protocol processor for outputting information of at least one channel selected by the user from the signal output from the broadcast-signal processor, wherein said zapping-protocol processor receives digital broadcast signals for all the channels from the broadcast-signal processor, wherein a protocol for selecting a broadcast signal conforms to a related standard; a switch for opto-electrically converting the communication signal demultiplexed by the WDM optical demultiplexer, for electro-optically converting upstream information from the user to transfer the converted upstream information to the OLT, and for transferring the at least one channel selected by the user to the zapping-protocol processor; and, a convergence unit for outputting, in the form of the time slot-based optical signal, the signal selected by the user and outputted from the zapping-protocol processor and the communication-signal output from the switch.