Study of a hybrid OCDMA-WDM segmented ring for metropolitan area networks

Optical Code Division Multiple Access (OCDMA) techniques have shown outstanding capabilities in the sharing of optical media, in particular in access networks. However, OCDMA systems may suffer from Multiple Access Interference (MAI) and other kinds of noise when many users access the shared media simultaneously, increasing the BER (Bit Error Rate) to unacceptable levels, that is, a situation at which all combined signals interfere and are lost. This work proposes a mixed OCDMA and Tunable Transmitter-Fixed Receiver (TT-FR) WDM and ring architecture at which the ring is split into small-size segments to limit the probability of MAI. Essentially, every segment in the ring has got two hub nodes (on the segment's head and tail) which forwards inter-segment traffic to other hub nodes on dedicated home wavelengths, thus making use of WDM. The access media inside the segment is shared between the nodes by means of OCDMA, and code reuse is possible on different segments. Our performance analysis shows how to split a given ring into segments in order to minimise the BER due to multiple users accessing the network and allow for high bit-rates for a given traffic load. In addition, we analyse the possibility of introducing Forward Error Correction (FEC) at a moderate overhead cost to improve performance.