Code-based all optical routing employing a two-level-coding scheme is proposed. The first level of coding is employed to establish connections between users within a local area network; a second level of coding provides routing/interconnectivity between networks. The limitations due to physical-layer impairments, such as relative intensity noise (RIN) of the optical source, the signal-dependent shot noise, optical beat interference (OBI), and thermal noise at the receiver, which are some of the fundamental issues in the design of practical optical code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, are analyzed for the two-level scheme. The throughput in terms of "packets/time slot" offered by the scheme is also compared with that of the wavelength division multiple access (WDMA) system. The system capacity in WDMA is limited by the number of available wavelengths; optical CDMA, on the other hand, has many codes (user addresses), but the throughput is limited by multiple user interference, OBI, and RIN. System designs that overcome these effects and thereby improve the throughput are suggested.

© 2006 IEEE

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