Real-time communication networks based on optical fiber code-division multiple-access scheme

Optical signal processing can eliminate the speed limitation at electro-optic/optoelectronic interfaces, which allows the use of simple bandwidth-expansion-type protocols to support high-speed networking for real-time computer and control applications. This paper proposes a code-division multiple-access (CDMA) network which uses prime codes and optical processing to guarantee real-time data communications. All-optical architectures for fast, tunable CDMA encoders and decoders are presented. Systematic delay-control algorithms for prime codes are also given, which can be easily performed in the optical domain to support a high throughput and a very fast reconfiguration time. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.