According to an aspect of this invention, dynamic bandwidth assignment (DBA) can be performed without interrupting communication of a regular cell and interfering with communication between child stations. In a passive optical network including a parent station and a plurality of child stations, a maintenance signal for a mini slot signal is provided. Each of the child stations sends a corresponding maintenance signal if necessary, and the parent station controls state transition by using the maintenance signal concerning on the mini slot signal for each of the child stations. By controlling the state transition, the dynamic bandwidth assignment can be performed.