A High-Speed Fiber Optic Data Bus for Local Data Communications

Over the past decade, the volume of data compiled in industrial, military, and scientific databases has increased to enormous proportions. This increase has led to the development of new techniques for economically transporting information locally at high data rates. Leading among these techniques is the serial asynchronous multiterminal time-division multiplexed data bus. This paper describes a 100 Mbit/s fiber optic data bus system for connecting 16 terminals separated by up to 2 km. The system was developed as part of a NASA database management system for archiving and retrieval of satellite data. The NASA application will be briefly introduced followed by discussions on the high-speed data bus architecture, bus access protocols, system implementation, and error rate performance.