OPTICAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM COMBINING BOTH BASEBAND AND PASSBAND SIGNALS

This invention is a new communication system in which multichannel broadcast digital services are distributed to each user with the broadcast video signal riding in the passband above a digital baseband signal. The system can deliver more than 1 Gbps additional bandwidth to each subscriber. The passband bandwidth will accommodate growth in downstream services including video on demand, higher speed web downloads including improved streaming audio and video, HDTV, interactive video, and personalized video. The invention requires only a single transmitter, a single transmission fiber and a single receiver for each user. A single transmitter, single fiber, single receiver system is much less expensive than two systems, one transmitting baseband and the other passband. A single receiver is greatly cost beneficial to achieving an economical fiber to the home solution where equipment at the end user location is not shared among multiple end users. In an exemplary embodiment, an optical communication system comprises a diplexer for electronically combining the baseband and passband signals, a digital laser transmitter for generating an optical signal containing the combined signals, a length of optical transmission fiber for transmitting the optical signal, and, for each user or group of users, an optical receiver coupled to the fiber.