Apparatus and method for measuring the quality of burst signals and performing optical line diagnostics

An apparatus for performing optical line diagnostics of a transmission line between optical network units (ONUs) and an optical line terminal (OLT) in a passive optical network (PON), the apparatus comprising:

• a phase error unit (PEU) for generating initial quality indicators and quality measures respective of input burst signals received at the OLT;
• a statistical accumulation block (SAB) coupled to the PEU and capable of performing statistical analysis on the quality measures by computing for each quality measure an average value, an absolute value, a minimum value, a swing value, and a maximum value, the SAB aggregates quality measures computed for each ONU in different times within a burst signal sent from the ONU, the quality measures include at least one of:
• an average sampling point (ASP), a number of detected narrow bits (NB), an average wave form (AWF), a jitter indication, and a duty cycle indication;
• a memory unit for storing statistics generated by the SAB;
• and
• a processor for processing statistics stored in the memory unit to generate a plurality of failure indications related to the optical line diagnostics.