The receiver collision avoidance (RCA) protocol for a single-hop WDM lightwave network

Abstract

We propose a multiple access protocol for a single-hop wavelength division multiplexing (WDM)-based multichannel local lightwave network. The protocol can support a large number of high-speed bursty traffic nodes interconnected via a passive optical star coupler. Each node is equipped with only one transmitter and one receiver, both of which are tunable over all the channels. A single control channel is established to arbitrate access to the other channels, called data channels. Access to the control channel is provided via a variation of slotted ALOHA so that the system is scalable. Unlike other protocols proposed in [11], [18], [23], our protocol contains a simple mechanism which can dynamically detect and avoid receiver collisions (hence it is called the receiver collision avoidance (RCA) protocol)