Experimental demonstration and scalability analysis of a four-node 102-Gchip/s fast frequency-hopping time-spreading optical CDMA network

We present experimental and simulation results from a 102-Gchips/s incoherent wavelength-hopping time-spreading optical code-division multiple-access testbed, utilizing four 50-GHz ITU grid wavelengths. Error-free operation of four users is obtained with an effective power penalty /spl sim/0.5 dB. Simulation studies show scalability to >10 users with an effective power penalty of /spl sim/4 dB. The simulation study of the impact of asynchronous access on the performance allows for a complete network design from an engineering viewpoint.