Abstract

Very high-speed optical networks with fixed-length cells at the physical layer, form the basis for a number of promising network architectures that have the potential to provide voice, data, and video services; asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switching and the distributed queue dual bus (DQDB) are important examples of current fixed cell length network implementations. While these networks use the optical link to provide connectivity between nodes, with all switching being performed electronically, it is interesting to consider derivative networks that use optical switching (in conjunction with electronic switching) to improve performance. In this paper, we discuss the experimental and theoretical performance (bit error ratio, insertion loss, clock recovery, and jitter) of one such network in which fixed-length optical cells are inserted or removed from a ring or bus. Add/drop multiplexing in the optical domain [1-5] removes the requirement for optoelectronic regeneration, and store and forward of data, at every node in a network; it thus reduces latency, and is synergistic with the introduction of optical amplifiers into wide area and metropolitan area networks. Moreover, the physical layer protocol described in this paper avoids the electronic bottleneck associated with header processing at each node, and thus may lead to networks in which the data transfer rate approaches the (≈10 Gb/s) link transmission rates that can be obtained easily using conventional lightwave technology.

© 1993 Optical Society of America