A Simple High Speed Optical Local Area Network Based on Flooding.

This work deals with the problem of interconnecting many high speed terminal users via an optical Local Area Network (LAN). We take advantage of Space Division Multiplexing (SDM) to provide point-to-point connectivity. As a result, simple light source and receivers are all that is required. The call set-up between source and destination is based on the broadcasting of a call set-up packet or "flooding" which is a simple topology-independent routing method and which alleviates the need to have intelligent nodes (cross-points). A simple protocol is used to establish an end-to-end path using flooding. Once a source/destination path is established, the actual call starts. The established path is not interrupted by other call set-up flooding attempts and/or other calls.