Above the nominal limit performance evaluation of multiwavelength optical code-division multiple-access systems

Abstract

We provide an analysis for the performance of a multiwavelength optical code-division multiple-access (MW-OCDMA) network when the system is working above the nominal transmission rate limit imposed by passive encoding-decoding operation. We address the problem of overlapping in such a system and how it can directly affect the bit error rate (BER). A unified mathematical framework is presented under the assumption of one-coincidence sequences with nonrepeating wavelengths. A closed form expression of the multiple access interference limited BER is provided as a function of different system parameters. Results show that the performance of the MW-OCDMA system can be critically affected when working above the nominal limit, an event that can happen when the network operates at a high transmission rate. In addition, the impact of the derived error probability on the performance of two newly proposed medium access control (MAC) protocols, the S-ALOHA and the R3T, is also investigated. It is shown that for low transmission rates, the S-ALOHA is better than the R3T, while the R3T is better at very high transmission rates. In general, it is postulated that the R3T protocol suffers a higher delay mainly because of the presence of additional modes.