Integration of voice communication on a synchronous optical hypergraph

The optical hypergraph is a novel network architecture in which each edge of the hypergraph is a multiple-access broadcast medium constructed as a passive optical star coupler. Access to each net (edge) is time-slotted, and the system maintains global slot synchronization. The integration of voice into the system is done by reserving time slots in a periodic manner. A packet which contains several voice parcels from different phone conversations is transferred in these slots. These parcels may have different destinations on the optical net. As a result of the global end-to-end synchronization, the delay from the source to the destination is a known constant, with accuracy of plus or minus half a time slot. In the analysis, it is shown that the system improves its operation as the communication bandwidth increases. In other words, the algorithms and protocols improve in performance as the communication bandwidth increases. Two criteria are used to exhibit this phenomenon: (i) the utilization efficiency and (ii) the end-to-end delay