Switching Latency Overlap Techniques for WDM Star-Coupled Media Access Protocols

This paper investigates the impact of the wavelength tunable device switching latency on the performance of media access protocols for star-coupled wavelength-division multiplexed photonic networks. The relative impact with a reservation-based protocol (TDMA-C) and two pre-allocation-based protocols (I-TDMA and I-SA) are compared. TDMA-C is control channel based, with one WDM channel allocated to reserve access for data packet transmission on the remaining data channels. Control channel access arbitration is achieved through time-division multiplexing, enabling all active nodes the opportunity to transmit once every control cycle. I-SA and I-TDMA are designed for a network where channels are pre-allocated to the nodes for reception where each node has a home channel it uses for all data packet receptions. The performance of the protocols is evaluated through discrete-event simulation in terms of network throughput, packet delay, and data channel utilization. In particular, thi..