Patent ID: 7289732

Claim:
A broadcast/communication unified passive optical network system, comprising: an optical line termination configured to time-division multiplex reccived digital broadcast signals, to receive communication signals from an electronic network, configured to wavelength-division multiplex the time-division multiplexed digital broadcast signals and the communication signals, and configured to transmit the wavelength-division multiplexed signals; a plurality of optical network units coupled to the optical line termination, each of said optical network units configured to wavelength-division demultiplex the wavelength-division multiplexed signals received from thc optical line termination, configured to time-division demultiplex the time-division multiplexed digital broadcast signals, and configured to output a subset of the time-division demultiplexed digital broadcast signals selected in accordance with a subscriber control signal and the communicating signals; and a plurality of setup boxes coupled to one of the plurality of optical network units, each of the plurality of setup boxes configured to receive the wavelength-division deniultiplexed and time-division demultiplexed broadcast signals and the wavelength-division demultiplexed communication signals from corresponding optical network unit and configured to send subscriber control signals input by the subscriber to the corresponding optical network unit, wherein the optical line termination comprises: a first and a second format converter configured to format-convert the digital broadcast signals from a moving image format into a time-division multiplexing (TDM) format; a first time-division multiplexer configured to time-division multiplex the format-converted digital broadcast signals; a distributor configured to receive broadcast signals from the electronic network; and a first wavelength-division multiplexer being coupied to the first time-division multiplexer, being configured to wavelength-division multiplex the communication signals and the time-division multiplexed digital broadcast signals that is also format convened, and being configured to transmit the wavelength-division multiplexed signals to the optical network units over an optical fiber.