Design of a medium access control protocol for a WDMA/TDMA photonic ring network

We present a new medium access control protocol for a photonic ring network based on a combination of wavelength- and time-division multiple access. The protocol can achieve a maximum throughput in excess of 90%, though simulations of this protocol show that it has a practical limit of around 70% throughput. By comparison, the alternative proposed protocol, slotted ALOHA, has a maximum throughput of around 36%-almost half that of our protocol.