A demand-assign optical frequency-division-multiple-access star network

A demand-assignment optical frequency-division-multiaccess (DA-OFDMA) star network that achieves efficient frequency utilization while offering an efficient assign control protocol is described. First, two OFDMA star networks are compared. One employs a frequency routing multiplexer and the other uses an optical mixer. Next, an efficient access control protocol for DA-OFDMA is discussed, and it is shown that the preassigned TDMA protocol is most effective when applied to metropolitan area networks (MANs). The maximum network size of a DA-OFDMA star network is determined. A preliminary experiment confirms the feasibility of DA-OFDMA star networks