Communication Protocols for SCM-WDM Networks

Subcarrier wavelength-division multiaccess (SCM-WDM) networks have many features, such as high system capacity, flexible packet switching access and very fast tuning speed of RF local-oscillator, etc. Though, generally speaking, existing protocols for WDMA networks can be applied to SCM-WDM networks, the transmission efficiency in terms of packet delay and network throughput is low, since an optimal wavelength channel assignment for a WDMA network may not be optimal in a SCM-WDM network with many subcarrier channels involved. In this paper, we propose two new communication protocols for SCM-WDM networks. Simulation results show that the proposed protocols have performance very close to an optimal solution while their complexity is much lower.