Collisionless Multiple Access Protocols for Wavelength Division Multiplexed Star-Coupled Photonic Ne

This paper introduces a collisionless wavelength division multiple access protocol for a passive tar-coupled photonic network that possesses significant performance and flexibility adva ntages over alternative approaches. This protocol is compa red in terms of relative performance and network architecture to the dynamic time-wavelength division multiaccess (DT-WDMA) protocol proposed in [1] through an extensive simulation study. The p rotocols are control channel based: one of the WDM channels is used to reserve data channel access for data packet transmis sion. Both protocols achieve access arbitration of the cont rol channel through time-division multiplexing and eliminate the long synchronization delays typical in networks with time-mult iplexing employed on the data channels. The proposed approach elimin ates the linkage between the number of nodes, channels, and p acket length as proposed in [1]. Variable sized data packets in a co llisionless environment are supported without utilizatio n degradation. Furthermore, an overlapping mechanism is introduced that r el xes the constraints on the switching times of the optical components by decreasing the performance sensitivity. The performanc e is ompared in terms of network throughput, packet delay, a nd control and data channel utilization. In particular, this paper exa mines the performance impact with variations in the number o f nodes and data channels, packet generation rate, data packet length, and the optical device switching latencies.