Patent ID: 8442398

Claim:
A system for performance monitoring in a passive optical network (PON), comprising: a plurality of optical network units (ONUs); and an optical line terminal (OLT) coupled to the plurality of ONUs via a passive optical splitter, the OLT comprising: an optical transceiver configured to transmit optical signals to and receive optical signals from the plurality of ONUs, and a performance-monitoring mechanism configured to: generate a logical link identifier that is dedicated to the performance monitoring to be used by each of the plurality of ONUs, the logical link identifier not being used for regular data transmissions, grant a transmission window with a predetermined length to the logical link identifier, assign the logical link identifier to each of the plurality of ONUs in a round-robin way to monitor performance of the PON, and measure optical signals received from an ONU that is presently assigned the logical link identifier from among the plurality of ONUs to monitor the performance of the PON.