Using explicit reservations to arbitrate access to a metropolitan system of slotted interconnected rings combining TDMA and WDMA

A system of slotted interconnected wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) rings controlled by a medium access control (MAC) protocol is shown to offer very high utilization within a queuing delay less than a few round-trip times, by means of a very-fast-reacting explicit reservation mechanism. The system can be used to provide interconnectivity in a metropolitan area transferring optical payloads on-the-fly without buffering or converting from the optical domain. All necessary control information is transferred on a dedicated wavelength and is processed in the electrical domain to provide both collision-free packet access at the ring nodes and contention resolution at the hub interconnecting the rings. The end result is a flexible and efficient metropolitan network suitable for bursty data services.