Patent ID: 8365237

Claim:
A method of bidirectional Time Division Duplex data transmission over the same frequency ranges of a CATV cable system: said CATV cable system comprising: a CATV cable tree with a root master modem configured with a master clock, and a plurality of slave modems connected to various locations of said CATV cable tree, each said slave modem configured with a slave clock, said plurality of slave modems being disposed at various distances along said CATV cable tree from said root master modem; said plurality of slave modems comprising at least a nearest slave modem disposed along the shortest CATV cable tree path from said master modem, and a furthest slave modem disposed along the longest CATV cable tree path from said master modem; said method comprising: time synchronizing the slave clocks of said plurality of slave modems to the master clock of said master modem; determining the signal propagation times between said master modem and each of said plurality of slave modems; determining the current or projected upstream and downstream data needs for each of said plurality of slave modems; using said signal propagation times and said current or projected upstream and downstream data needs for each of said plurality of slave modems to construct a MAP Time Division Duplex allocation scheme, and transmitting said MAP Time Division Duplex allocation scheme to each of said plurality of slave modems; and using said MAP Time Division Duplex allocation scheme to control the bi-directional data transmission between said master modem and said plurality of slave modems.