Patent ID: 7843936

Claim:
A passive optical network (PON) system, comprising: an optical line terminal (OLT) a splitter with combiner; and a plurality of optical network units (ONUs), each of said ONUs having a first Tx/Rx for transmitting and receiving data packets on an upstream data channel and a downstream data channel through said splitter with combiner to/from said OLT, a second Tx/Rx for transmitting and receiving control messages on an independent control channel to/from said splitter with combiner, and a dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) module executing a same DBA algorithm for bandwidth control; wherein said splitter with combiner combines control messages from said ONUs into a combined control message and broadcasts said combined control message to each of said ONUs, and said DBA algorithm is a distributed bandwidth control algorithm executed in each of said ONUs based on said combined control message to decide which of said ONUs has right to use a slot without involving said OLT in the bandwidth control.