Dark signalling and code division multiple access in an optical fibre LAN with a bus topology

Abstract

This thesis describes an optical fibre network that uses a bus topology and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). Various potential configurations are analysed and compared and it is shown that a serious limitation of optical CDMA schemes using incoherent correlators is the effect of optical beating due to the presence of multiple incoherent optical signals at the receiver photodiode. The network proposed and analysed in this thesis avoids beating between multiple optical fields because it only uses a single, shared, optical source. It does this through the SLIM (Single Light-source with In-line Modulation) configuration in which there is a continuously-operating light source at the head-end of a folded bus, and modulators at the nodes to impose signals on the optical field in the form of pulses of darkness which propagate along the otherwise continuously bright bus. Optical CDMA can use optical-fibre delay-line correlators as matched filters, and these may be operated either coherently or incoherently.Coherent operation is significantly more complex than incoherent operation, but incoherent correlators introduce further beating even in a SLIM network. A new design of optical delay-line correlator, the hybrid correlator, is therefore proposed, analysed and demonstrated. It is shown to eliminate beating. A model of a complete network predicts that a SLIMbus using optical CDMA with hybrid correlators can be operated at TeraBaud rates with the number of simultaneous users limited by multiple access interference (MAI), determined only by the combinatorics of the code set.