A simple high-speed optical local area network based on flooding

The problem of interconnecting many high-speed terminal users via an optical local area network (LAN) is addressed. Space-division multiplexing (SDM) is used to provide point-to-point connectivity, so simple light sources and receivers are all that is required. The call setup between a source and a destination is based on the broadcasting of a short address packet called flooding, which is a simple topology-independent routing method that alleviates the need to have intelligent nodes (cross points). A simple protocol is used to establish an end-to-end path using flooding. Once a source/destination path is established, the actual call starts. The established path is not interrupted by other call setup flooding attempts and/or other cells. A performance analysis for a simple tree network indicates that a capacity of 66% can be achieved at reasonable average blocking delays. The network users can each access full electronics speeds, and the total throughput of the network is a multiple of full electronics speed, with concurrency achieved by SDM