A Control Channel Architecture with Collisions Avoidance Strategy for Performance Improvement in WDM Ring Networks

This study introduces the scalability problem of many WDMA protocols for ring networks. We present a slotted access protocol and a scalable network architecture suitable for WDM ring metropolitan area networks. Each node is equipped with a pair of tunable transceivers to communicate exploiting all the fiber data wavelengths. Also, each node uses a pair of fixed tuned transceivers to exchange control information over a separate control wavelength. The proposed protocol efficiently utilizes the available bandwidth applying a simple access algorithm to avoid both the data channels and the receiver collisions. Performance measures evaluation is provided through analysis. Also, a discrete event simulation model is developed that uses both poisson and pareto traffic sources, giving more realistic performance measures evaluation. Comparative simulation results show that the proposed protocol and network architecture achieve significant performance improvement as compared with the study of [1] which employs nodes with one fixed tuned transmitter. Key-Words:Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM), WDM ring network, collisions avoidance.