Performance evaluation of a high-speed wavelength division multiplexing/asynchronous transfer mode optical fiber local area network

This work studies the performance of a proposed high-speed optical fiber lo cal area network based on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and asynch ronous transfer mode (ATM). The design optimizes the usage of resources by assigning different types of traffic to two overlapping sub-networks. The W DM segment is a circuit-oriented network for high-speed traffic. The ATM su b-network handles control, low speed traffic and overflows of the WDM netwo rk. Each network is supported by one of two types of channels. The ATM chan nel employs conventional ATM cells for all stations using a 1300-nm wavelen gth carrier. The WDM channel which is assigned dynamically for very high-sp eed applications operates at 1500 nm band. The application of an ATM networ k to handle the overflow traffic reduces blocking in the system by approxim ately 13% for a 32 WDM system. However, depending on the load, it may incre ase the delay between 5% to 30%. In addition, employing an adequate queuing policy, we may reduce the blocking by 30% while increasing the delay by 5% . We may conclude that the network is more efficient handling the traffic l oad compared to a simple circuit switched WDM network, (C) 1999 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. [S0091-3286(99)02511-8].