Patent ID: 8724995

Claim:
A passive optical network system, comprising: a master station and a plurality of slave stations are connected by an optical fiber network comprising an optical splitter and a plurality of optical fibers; wherein the master station is configured to determine the amount of signal to be transmitted from each of the plurality of slave stations to the master station and its transmission timing, in accordance with requests sent from the plurality of slave stations; and the master station is configured to receive signals from the plurality of slave stations through the optical fiber network; wherein the master station comprises a control unit which is configured to determine on a constant cycle the amount of signal that each of the plurality of slave stations is permitted to send to the master station, its transmission timing, and its signal clock rate used for signal transmission, in accordance with the amount of signal transmission requested by each of the plurality of slave stations; and wherein each of the plurality of slave stations comprises a control unit configured to send a signal to the master station at a first clock rate or a second clock rate which is higher than the first clock rate, and the control unit is configured to send the signal either at the first clock rate or the second clock rate, in accordance with a report sent from the master station, wherein, when the control unit of the master station determines on the constant cycle the amount of signal that each of the plurality of slave stations is permitted to send, in accordance with the amount of signal requested by each of the plurality of slave stations, and when the amount of signal that the plurality of slave stations is permitted to send falls below the possible transmission amount in the constant cycle at the first clock rate, the control unit is configured to set the signal clock rate that the plurality of slave stations send to the first clock rate, and, when the amount of signal permitted to send exceeds the possible transmission amount in the constant cycle at the first clock rate, the control unit is configured to set the signal clock rate that at least one of the plurality of slave stations sends to the second clock rate.