An efficient channel access protocol for an optical star network

We have previously proposed a new scalable protocol for an optical star network, termed AFAP (adaptive fixed assignment protocol). It requires a smaller amount of control information than other reservation-based protocols: C bits per control packet, where C is the number of channels. This paper provides a complete study of the AFAP. Simulation results show the performance of AFAP when (a) the network size increases and (b) the traffic is non-uniform. We propose an extension of AFAP that better handles non-uniform traffic. In the extended AFAP, the fixed receiver for data reception is replaced by a tunable receiver; however, this tunable receiver does not have to retune very fast.