A new optical time-division multiple-access broadcast network based on multistar topology

Abstract

A new optical time division multiple-access (OTDMA) broadcast network is proposed, in which two wavelengths are used to carry OTDMA and optical clock signals, respectively. At each OTDMA receiver, the slot/phase synchronization is feasibly achieved by using simple optical delay lines to process the separated clock and OTDMA signals. The detailed hardware design of the proposed network is also described. It is shown that using the newly proposed technique one can build flexible multistage broadcast networks based on star topology.