CONNECTION-BASED OPTICAL WAVELENGTH-DIVISION MULTIPLEXED NETWORK WITH TIME-SLOT REARRANGEMENT

We have proposed a connection-based optical wavelength division multiplexing network architecture. For the networks such as inter-office LANs, the guarantee of the bandwidths of connection-oriented calls is necessary. Notable features of the network are that multicast can be executed without copying the same data, and that time slots are rearrangeable to increase the throughput. The topology is passive star and a network controller (NWC) is connected to manage the time slot assignment. Each station's transmitting wavelength is fixed and is different from that of other stations. Each receiver changes the receiving wavelength slot by slot. Stations reserve time slots with permission of the NWC. Once a time slot is reserved the station can use the slot in every frame until the reservation is cancelled. This feature guarantees the bandwidths of connection-oriented calls. Upon receiving a time slot request, the NWC searches for a not-in-use slot common to the source station's transmitter (Tx) and the destination station's receiver (Rx). If there is no common empty slot and both the Tx and the Rx have empty slots, the NWC rearranges the already allocated time slots to create a new common empty slot. Simulations were performed to estimate the blocking rates for various cases of call bandwidth including multi-bitrate (the case in which various bandwidth calls are generated in a network) and multicast call, the calculation load of the NWC when it assigns a time slot including rearrangement, and the success rate of rearrangement. It was found that the blocking rate with the rearrangement is greatly reduced (<1/10) compared with the case without rearrangement of the same throughput when the number of slots in a frame is more than 120, the number of stations in the network is 60 and the blocking rate without the rearrangement is less than 10(-2). Over 100 Gbps throughput can be achieved when the number of slots in a frame is 120-240, the number of stations is 60, the bitrate of a transmitter is 2.5 Gbps and the blocking rate is about 10(-2). The rearrangement is especially effective in the case of multi-bitrate in which the blocking rate can be reduced to 1/100 that of the case without rearrangement at some point. It is also shown that a slot assignment including rearrangement can be executed sufficiently quickly (<5 mu s). These results indicate that practical realization of this access control architecture is possible.