Analysis and Simulation of a Plastic Optical Fiber Access Network Based on OCDMA Technology

In this paper a plastic optical fiber (POF) access network based on optical code-division multiple access (OCDMA) technology is proposed. Recently, optical transmission using POF has received much attention due to its low weight, large core diameter, flexibility, and easy installation. Specially, its high bandwidth makes POF a very attractive candidate for a transmission media in an access network based on OCDMA technology. A conventional OCDMA system only allows a finite number of units to transmit and access simultaneously according to the number of channels which is restricted by BER. To resolve this problem a novel protocol is also proposed in this paper. The protocol can efficiently support variable-sized messages, and any new unit can join the network at any time without requiring network initialization. To implement the demonstration, each optical network unit is equipped with a fixed and a tunable optical encoder/decoder. The optical encoder/decoder employing planar holographic optical processors (HOPs) in this system may be of low fabrication cost. The network throughput and average delay using various system parameters has been investigated by numerical analysis and simulation experiments. It is shown that the dynamic control protocol in this POF access network based on OCDMA technology is valid and efficient.