PROTON: a media access control protocol for optical networks with star topology

A new multiple access protocol called PROTON (PROTocol for Optical Networks) is developed for optical local area networks based on a passive star topology. PROTON uses wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and is highly bandwidth-efficient. One of the available wavelengths is used as a control channel. Time is divided into fixed-sized slots. The size of the slots is the same for the control and the data channels. Before transmitting a packet, a station must compete with others for a slot in a data wavelength, using a collision-free procedure. Transmitting stations and the corresponding wavelengths for their data transmissions are determined at each station by a simple arbitration scheme. The protocol is suitable for networks where the number of users can be much larger than the number of available data channels. In addition to propagation delays, it is considered that transmitter and receiver tuning times as well as the times required to process control packets are not negligible. Whenever possible, and to maximize the throughput of the network, tuning and processing times of transmitters and receivers are overlapped with each other and with data transmission times. Also, data slot requests and packet transmissions are scheduled in a pipeline fashion, thus reducing the detrimental effects on throughput and packet delay of long propagation delays. The paper includes an analysis of the maximum throughput characteristics of PROTON. An analytical model is developed, and several performance measures are obtained