Patent ID: 7184670

Claim:
A telemetry system comprising: a plurality of acoustic sensors for receiving acoustic information and generating analog signals based on the received acoustic information; a first plurality of subsystems coupled to at least a subset of the plurality of acoustic sensors, the first plurality of subsystems configured to receive the analog signals from the acoustic sensors and generate digital values based on the received analog signals; a first optical splitter; a first optical transmitter for transmitting a first set of optical pulses to the first optical splitter, the first optical splitter configured to transmit the first set of optical pulses to each subsystem in the first plurality of subsystems, each subsystem in the first plurality of subsystems configured to modulate the first set of optical pulses based on the generated digital values and thereby generate a modulated optical pulse stream; a first optical combiner for receiving and combining the modulated optical pulse stream from each subsystem in the first plurality of subsystems, thereby generating a combined modulated optical pulse stream; and a first optical receiver for receiving the combined modulated optical pulse stream from the first optical combiner, the first optical receiver configured to generate electrical signals based on the received combined modulated optical pulse stream.