Design and Implementation of a Headend Cable Modem and a User Terminal supporting Multiple Downstream Channel Bonding

In this paper, we present efficient designs and implementations of a headend cable modem and a user terminal supporting downstream channel bonding for the HFC plant. The developed systems can enable various communication- broadcasting converged services over HFC network, such as HD IP-TV. The downstream channel bonding combines multiple downstream channels to provide greater aggregate bandwidth up to 400 Mbps for a user. We also present the test and demonstration results showing the advantages of the developed systems supporting the downstream channel bonding scheme. The proposed designs and implementations in this paper can be used to develop advanced headend cable modem and user terminal which provide hundreds Mbps transmission speed through downstream channel bonding, and enable new converged services over HFC network.