Photonic bus metropolitan area networks

Protocol design and receiver allocation for photonic bus networks (PBNets) are considered. The basic building block for PBNets consists of a linear multihop network interconnected in a bidirectional bus virtual-topology using point-to-point optical channels. Although the system may be implemented using any optical broadcast device, PBNets are designed to exploit transmissive optical star technology. A new media access protocol referred to as REQPASS (request passing protocol) is proposed for the system. An analytic model which accurately predicts individual station queuing delay is introduced. New algorithms are also proposed for receiver allocation in PBNets.<>