Mac Protocols for Wdm Networks – Survey and Summary

With the proliferation of the world-wide-web (WWW), current local and wide area networks can hardly cope with the huge demand for network bandwidth. As a result, there is a world-wide effort in upgrading current networks with highcapacity fiber-optic links that can potentially deliver Tera-bits/sec bandwidth. The Wavelength-Division-Multiplexing (WDM) is an effective technique for utilizing the large bandwidth of an optical fiber. By allowing multiple simultaneous transmission over a number of channels, WDM has the potential to significantly improve the performance of optical networks. The nodes in the network can transmit and receive messages on any of the available channels by employing one or more tunable transmitter(s) and/or tunable receiver(s). Several topologies have been proposed for WDM networks. Of particular interest to us in this 150 OPTICAL WDM NETWORKS chapter is the single-hop topology where a WDM optical network is configured as a broadcast-and-select network in which all the input nodes are combined using a passive star coupler, and the mixed optical information is broadcast to all destinations. To unleash the potential of single-hop WDM passive star networks, effective medium access control (MAC) protocols are needed to efficiently allocate and coordinate the system resources. In this chapter, we present a comprehensive survey of state-the-art MAC protocols for WDM networks so as to give the reader an overview of the research efforts conducted in this area for the past decade. In addition, it can serve as a starting point for further investigation into ways of coping with the current and the anticipated explosion of multimedia information transfer.