Abstract

Optical microarea networks (μANs) are proposed as a way of providing flexible communications among VLSI processors and eliminating electrical I/O bottlenecks. Time-division multiple access (TDMA) may be more practical to implement in a μAN than other shared-medium multiple access protocols such as wavelength-division, frequency-division, or code-division. The passive-star architecture of the TDMA μAN investigated in this work is illustrated in Fig. 1 and described in detail elsewhere.¹ This network uses a 100-MHz repetition-rate mode-locked laser with external modulators to generate the baseband data and operates at a multiplexed data rate of 5 Gbit/s to support up to 50 user channels. Figure 2(a) is an oscilloscope trace of the portion of the 10-ns data frame showing channels 50, 1,2, and 25 transmitting a one bit. The performance of this network relies on two key components. One component is variable-integer delay line which must provide a rapid high-precision wide tuning range for distribution of the system clock.² The other component is a high-speed optical correlation receiver.

© 1992 Optical Society of America