PERFORMANCE CALCULATION FOR AN OPTICAL MAN

A Metropolitan Area Network employing optical fibre in a unique fashio n is described and analysed with respect to performance. There are two possible physical configurations: a basic topology such as the star a nd the tree, and the compound configuration such as the tree-star-tree . As a logical overlay which serves to route information packets betwe en stations, a form of perfect shuffle - the ShuffleNet - is used. Log ical links between stations are fashioned from subbands of individual wavelength channels. Performance is calculated in terms of average pac ket delay as a function of traffic load. For example, we delineate the average packet delay as a function of traffic load. Of particular int erest is the effect of a limitation on the bandwidth of optical amplif iers, such limitation increases the length of the path between origina ting and terminating stations.