Low-Complexity Multiple Access Protocols for Wavelength-Division Multiplexed Photonic Networks

Abstract Media access control protocols for an optically interconnected star-coupled system with pre-allocated Wavelength Division Multiple Access channels are introduced and compared. The photonic network is based on a passive star-coupled configuration where high topological connectivity is achieved with low complexity and excellent fault-tolerance. The channels are pre-allocated to the nodes with the proposed approach, where each node has a home channel it uses either for data packet transmission or data packet reception. This approach reduces the resulting system complexity since both tunable transmitters and tunable receivers are not required, and also has the advantage of being applicable to systems where there are many more nodes than wavelength channels. The performance of a generalized random access protocol is compared to an approach based on interleaved time multiplexing. Semi-markov analytic models are developed to investigate the performance of the two protocols. The analytic models are validated through extensive simulation. The performance is evaluated in terms of network throughput and packet delay with variations in the number of nodes, data channels, and packet generation rate.