Control system design of a conflict-free MAC protocol for a WDM man

In this paper, an efficient slotted WDMA protocol suitable for ring metropolitan area networks that employs a separate wavelength for control information exchange is proposed. Each access node is equipped with a pair of tunable transceivers for data communication and a pair of fixed tuned transceivers for control communication. An efficient access algorithm is applied to avoid both the data wavelengths and the receiver collisions. In our study, the serious scalability problems of many other WDMA protocols are effectively faced. This is achieved since each access node is capable of transmitting and receiving over any of the data wavelengths. Performance measures evaluation is provided via an analytic model and the results are validated by a discrete event simulation model that uses Pareto traffic sources, giving a more realistic study of modern networks traffic. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol manages efficient bandwidth utilization, especially under high load conditions. Comparative simulation results show that our protocol achieves essential performance improvement as compared with other WDMA protocols which restrict transmission over a dedicated data wavelength.