Method and apparatus of managing bandwidth allocation for upstream transmission in a unified optical-coaxial network

A coaxial line terminal (CLT) comprising:

• an optical port configured to couple to an optical line terminal (OLT) via a passive optical network (PON);
• an electrical port configured to couple to a coaxial network unit (CNU) via an electrical network;
• an index table having a plurality of first entries;
• a buffer having a plurality of second entries, wherein a first field of the first entries is configured to store a Logical Link Identifier (LLID) of the CNU and a second field of the plurality of first entries is configured to store a pointer to at least one of the second entries;
• a first-in first-out (FIFO) buffer configured to store one or more data transmission start times;
• and
• a buffer management unit coupled to the buffer, the index table, the FIFO buffer, the optical port, and the electrical port and configured to:
• instruct storage of the LLID in the first field;
• instruct storage of data transmitted by the CNU and identified by the LLID in a first register of the plurality of second entries;
• instruct storage of the pointer in the second field, wherein the pointer points to the first register;
• instruct storage, in an entry of the FIFO buffer, of a first data transmission start time allocated by the OLT to the CNU and identified by the LLID;
• and
• transmit the data to the OLT when an optical network timer in the CLT reaches the first data transmission start time.