Abstract

Two issues of primary importance in the design of optical networks are scalability and modularity. A scalable network is one to which more nodes may always be added; a modular network is one to which as few nodes may be added as is desired, one at a time, for example. Multiwavelength star and ring networks are not scalable because they require as many wavelengths as there are active node pairs on the network. In the simple fixed- wavelength-per-node address assignment the number of wavelengths required scales linearly with the number of nodes on the network. This is not acceptable for networks larger than a few tens of nodes. An implied requirement on scalable networks is, therefore, that the number of wavelengths required be independent of the number of nodes on the network.

© 1993 Optical Society of America