Patent ID: 7245628

Claim:
A method of time division multiplexing a use of a communication medium in a passive optical network among a plurality of optical network units, the method comprising: receiving information at an optical line terminal in the passive optical network from the plurality of optical network units in a time division multiplexed manner, wherein time slots occur sequentially one after another in each frame of a superframe, and a plurality of frames occur sequentially one after another in the superframe, and each frame in the superframe has an identical number of time slots, and wherein the superframe thereby has a structure of a two-dimensional array, with each frame representing a row and an identical time slot in each frame representing a column; and receiving a request at the optical line terminal from a given one of the optical network units for an amount of bandwidth; and allocating to said given optical network unit, based upon the amount of bandwidth requested, a first group of time slots located in a first column of the two-dimensional array, if each time slot in the first group is available; and if the first group of time slots does not satisfy the requested amount of bandwidth, allocating to said optical network unit a second group of time slots located in a second column if each time slot in the second group is available.