Multi-rate fiber-optic time division multiple access networks for digital TV/HDTV distribution applications

A new type of high-speed fiber-optic time division multiple access (TDMA) networks is proposed to support multi-rate data communications for hybrid digital TV/high-definition TV distributions. The basic principle of multi-data-rate time division multiplexing is presented, and the structure of the TDMA frame is discussed. A simple algorithm is also proposed for the time-slot assignment of users with different data rates. The design of the proposed network is described, and architectures for multirate optical TDMA receivers and fast optical clock-rate multipliers are presented. By using the proposed optical TDMA technique, the network flexibility can be significantly improved with respect to conventional equal-rate optical TDMA schemes. It is shown that a multi-rate fiber-optic TDMA network can be efficiently used to distribute multi-channel high-definition TV and standard digital TV signals simultaneously or to support future multi-rate broadband communication services.