High-speed wavelength encoded multiple-channel optical buses for LAN

Scalable, high-speed, wavelength encoded multiple-channel optical buses (WEMCOB) employing wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technologies are proposed to alleviate link speed constraints, wiring complexity and to increase power budget economically for a local area network (LAN). A hierarchical topology is adopted in the network where a dual uni-directional WEMCOB with separate control and data channels composes the backbone network, and uni-directional tree-based WEMCOB's with centralized arbiters constitute the sub-networks. We show that by utilizing today's opto-electronic technology a total transmission capacity of several tens of gigabits per second (Gb/s) can be obtained for a WEMCOB-based LAN.