A reservation and collision-free media access protocol for optical star local area networks

A new multiple access protocol is developed for optical local area networks based on a passive star topology. The protocol uses wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), and is highly bandwidth-efficient. Each station in the network is guaranteed a minimum bandwidth and a maximum access delay to the network, allowing the protocol to be used for both datagram and connection-oriented traffic. No central control is required, and the amount of processing required by each station is small. Time is divided in fixed-sized slots. Before transmitting its data, a station must compete with others for the right to use a slot in a preassigned wavelength, using a collision-free procedure. The protocol is suitable for networks where the number of users is larger than the number of available channels. The scheme can operate with at least a single tunable transmitter/receiver pair in each station. The paper includes plots where results obtained from simulations and from the application of models are compared.