fiber optic networks performance evaluation

performance of the fiber optic networks with different physical topologies such as point-to-point, bus, ring and star, with respect to requirements as bit rates, topology structure, bit. error rate (ber) and optical component characteristics including optical amplifiers, filters, sources and detectors, are analyzed and simulated. for this purpose, maximum number of supportable nodes and throughput, crosstalk due to optical amplifiers and optical filters, reliability, physical limitations and fiber induced limitations such as dispersion and nonlinear effects (self phase modulation) are considered as performance evaluation criteria of different topologies. dispersion and nonlinearities are simulated with split-step fourier method, sometimes referred to as beam-propagation method. the fiber length can be estimated by this method, with respect to above effects and maximum tolerable power penalties. parameters such as maximum number of supportable nodes and crosstalk are evaluated using amount of degradation in ber of receiver, ber is calculated using gaussian approximation. reliability of networks is modeled on the bypassing of the failed station as recovery mechanism in ring and bus networks and reliable assumption for central node in star network. by the way physical limitations in each topology, regarding its structure, are derived as an economical criterion. results indicate that no topology can be preferred to others, however imposed limitations and requirements determine the optimum topology. neglecting economical aspects, star topology is preferred from different points of view such as reliability, crosstalk and maximum number of supportable nodes. results of above simulations can be used in calculating power penalties of different factors such as dispersion, crosstalk and nonlinearities. this penalties perform important role in estimating power budget of networks.