Modeling and performance analysis of a symmetric fast-circuit switched robust-WDM LAN with the AR/LTP protocol

Robust wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) is a technique to implement WDM local area networks (LAN's) in the presence of laser wavelength drifts. A medium access control (MAC) protocol is used in conjunction with a wavelength-tracking receiver to tolerate the variations of transmission wavelengths. Among the proposed medium access schemes, the aperiodic reservation (AR) scheme with token-passing based control channel gives the best performance. An AR protocol with a lenient token passing policy (AR/LTP) is thus presented. An analytical model is developed to design Robust-WDM AR/LTP LAN's and predict their performance characteristics. The model can be used to evaluate the variation of waiting time and throughput for load and network parameters such as the arrival rate, number of nodes, number of channels and timing parameters. It also addresses the issues related to traffic loss, channel-blocking, token rotation time, network span, and the effect of device parameters.