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Abstract

A fiber optic access architecture consisting of a remote terminal for receiving broadband asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) traffic from a broadband switching system is disclosed. The broadband traffic is delivered over a pair of OC-12 links to common elements of the remote terminal. The common elements deliver the traffic to one of two high speed ATM buses. The ATM buses deliver the ATM traffic to one of a plurality of line cards that interface with the customer drop to the customer premise equipment. The line cards can include POTS (plain old telephone service) line cards and special line cards as are known to provide the traditional voice and special service. In addition to the standard line cards, the system includes the fiber line cards of the invention for delivering high speed, broadband traffic to the customer premise. The fiber line cards include 16 bit cell-based UTOPIA-2 bus interface for receiving traffic from each of the ATM buses. The UTOPIA interfaces deliver the ATM traffic to one of a plurality of ATM/SONET optical transceivers. Each optical transceiver consists of a 12 channel OC-1 physical layer framer that contains a 2-cell (106 byte) FIFO buffer to buffer the data upon arrival from the UTOPIA-2 interfaces. The framer performs SONET framing, pointer generation and scrambling for transmission. In the downstream direction, the framed SONET signals are delivered to a 12 channel laser driver and twelve lasers for transmitting the signals to the customer premise. In the upstream direction, the ATM cells are received from the customer premise at optical receivers such as photodiodes and are delivered to the UTOPIA interfaces via the framers. At the customer premise a video decoder card, POTS line card and/or a personal computer receive the signals over a passive bus.

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First Claim