Wavelength Division Multiple Access Channel Hypercube Processor Interconnection
IEEE Transactions on Computers
Performance Evaluation - Special issue on performance modeling of high speed telecommunication systems
Scheduling transmissions in WDM broadcast-and-select networks
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON)
Optical local area network technologies
IEEE Communications Magazine
A wavelength division multiple access network for computer communication
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
An efficient communication protocol for high-speed packet-switched multichannel networks
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
Low-complexity multiple access protocols for wavelength-division multiplexed photonic networks
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
WDM-based local lightwave networks. II. Multihop systems
IEEE Network: The Magazine of Global Internetworking
| Hi-index | 0.24 |
Extensive research and considerable progress in the dense WDM technology has made it most likely to be used in the next-generation of high performance switches, LANs and MANs. A truly multi-channel network, with each channel capable of transmitting several (even several tens of) Gigabits per second, has become technically feasible. The key challenge, beside the continuous development of the cost-effective optical components, in order to realize real systems is to design an effective protocol which, by taking full advantage of the existing and emerging optical technologies in the areas of optical transmitters, receivers, filters, amplifiers and couplers, can successfully coordinate between all the source and destination nodes (access control), and efficiently manages the huge fibre bandwidth (bandwidth management). There have been numerous protocols proposed for WDM networks, each with its characteristics reflecting the background of the community from which it originated. The objectives of this paper are twofold: (1) to demonstrate key trade-offs in the design of such a protocol, through close examination of some existing proposals; (2) to advocate the application of recent development of optical components in the WDM networks, in particular transmitters and receivers with a very fast tuning speed but very limited tuning range. Our intent is not to claim the superiority of any particular protocol. We feel that no single approach can provide a ubiquitous solution. Throughout the paper, rather than arguing the respective merits of each proposal, we illustrate the key issues addressed within each protocol and limitations it has. Additionally, we briefly describe a new protocol based on an in-band signalling scheme targeting such networks, and discuss its performance. Finally, we highlight some outstanding issues.