Multimedia transmission in fiber-optic LANs using optical CDMA

In this paper, we address the problem of multimedia transmission in fiber-optic networks. We apply the code-division multiple-access (CDMA) technique for such a network. The necessary conditions for successful operation of the network are given. It is shown that for successful operation, new families of optical orthogonal codes (OOCs) are needed which will have not only good correlation properties within one code family, but also between families of different code lengths. Some possible constructions of multimedia OOCs and the corresponding basic structure of the receiver for the multimedia network are given. Specific examples of OOCs for the case of users with two different data rates are given, and the probability of error (using the Gaussian approximation) as a function of the number of low and high rate users is calculated.