Optical orthogonal codes with unequal auto- and cross-correlation constraints

An optical orthogonal code (OOC) is a collection of binary sequences with good auto- and cross-correlation properties; they were defined by Salehi and others as a means of obtaining code-division multiple access on optical networks. Up to now, all work on OOCs have assumed that the constraint placed on the autocorrelation and that placed on the cross-correlation are the same. We consider-codes for which the two constraints are not equal. Specifically we develop bounds on the size of such OOCs and demonstrate constriction techniques for building them. The results demonstrate that a significant increase in the code size is possible by letting the autocorrelation constraint exceed the cross-correlation constraint. These results suggest that for a given performance requirement the optimal OOC may be one with unequal constraints. This paper also views OOCs with unequal auto- and cross-correlation constraints as constant-weight unequal error protection (UEP) codes with two levels of protection. The bounds derived are interpreted from this viewpoint.