PON OPTICAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM, STATION-SIDE APPARATUS, SUBSCRIBER-SIDE APPARATUS AND POWER CONSUMPTION CONTROL METHOD

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To achieve power consumption reduction by discriminating, from a station-side apparatus OLT, whether or not information addressed to a subscriber-side apparatus ONU is stored. SOLUTION: A PON optical communication system is configured to perform optical communication between a station-side apparatus OLT and a plurality of subscriber-side apparatuses ONUs via a beam splitter, and a transmitter 1 of the station-side apparatus OLT includes a downlink buffer 13 for storing user frames to be sequentially transmitted to the subscriber-side apparatuses ONUs. A power saving mode controller 16 transmits, to a subscriber-side apparatus ONU where user frames to be transmitted in the downlink buffer 13 is empty, a power saving mode-setting frame describing therein a power saving mode time TPS that is shorter than one cycle time from transmission to a certain subscriber-side apparatus ONU through sequential transmission to any other subscriber-side apparatus ONU to re-transmission to the certain subscriber-side apparatus ONU. In the case where a power saving mode setting frame is received, a PON receiver 2 of the subscriber-side apparatus ONU is set to the power saving mode for the power saving mode time TPS described in the power saving mode setting frame. COPYRIGHT: (C)2010,JPO&INPIT