The union of all partitions of the available capacity which satisfies the capacity bound and the performance criterion is defined as the capacity region. Both linear approximation and nonlinear approximation of the capacity region are investigated. For the case where the linear approximation appears too optimistic, a simple nonlinear approximation for determining the capacity region is suggested. The accuracy of the method is demonstrated using numerical examples. One of the available wavelengths is used as a control channel.
Time is divided into fixed-sized slots.
The size of the slots is the same for the control and the data channels. Before transmitting a packet, a station must compete with others for the right to use a slot in a data wavelength, using a collision-free procedure. Transmitting stations and the corresponding wavelengths for their data transmissions are determined at each station by a simple arbitration scheme. The protocol is suitable for networks where the number of users can be much larger than the number of available data channels. In addition to propagation delays, it is considered that transmitter and receiver tuning times as well as the times required to process control packets are not negligible.