A Design of a Wavelength-hopping Time-spreading Incoherent Optical Code Division Multiple Access System

We present the architecture and code design for a highly scalable, 2.5 Gb/s per user optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) system. The system is scalable to 100 potential and more than 10 simultaneous users, each with a bit error rate (BER) of less than 10. The system architecture uses a fast wavelength-hopping, time-spreading codes. Unlike frequency and phase sensitive coherent OCDMA systems, this architecture utilizes standard onoff keyed optical pulses allocated in the time and wavelength dimensions. This incoherent OCDMA approach is compatible with existing WDM optical networks and utilizes off the shelf components. We discuss the novel optical subsystem designs for encoders and decoders that enable the realization of a highly scalable incoherent OCDMA system with rapid reconfigurability. A detailed analysis of the scalability of the two dimensional code is presented and select network deployment architectures for OCDMA are discussed.