Control packet signaling mechanism using electronic code division multiple access for packet-based networks

We propose and experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of a control packet signaling technique using electronic code division multiple access for a wavelength division multiplexing packet-based network, whereby each wavelength channel is assigned a unique electronic code based label on a radio frequency subcarrier. Such a technique allows each wavelength channel to be electronically identified without requiring the use of a WDM demultiplexer. We experimentally demonstrate this technique with two wavelength channels each with 1.25 Gb/s baseband payload data and 10 Mb/s header coded onto an electronic code at 160 Mb/s. A performance study of the electronic code division multiple access based control signaling scheme in a wavelength division multiplexed packet-based access network is also performed in terms of the required power budget to monitor the electronic code division multiple access control signals in the presence of several sources of noise for error-free transmission of both payload data and electronic code division multiple access based control signals. It is shown that the modulation depth of each signal impacts the amount of required optical tap power. As the modulation depth of the electronic code division multiple access based control signal is increased, the required optical tap power is reduced. However, this increases the bit-error-rate for the payload data. Therefore, there lies a maximum and a minimum of the required tap optical power for the successful recovery of both signals. The lower bound of this range is usually determined by the successful recovery of electronic code division multiple access based control signal while the upper bound is determined by the successful recovery of payload data. The required optical tap power is analyzed for different transmission bit rates of the payload data for various receiver architecture scenarios without an optical amplifier at the receiver. The scalability analyses were repeated with an optical amplifier placed in the receiver terminal of the network. The resulting optical tap power that is required for the successful monitoring of the electronic code division multiple access based control signals are compared with that of the case without the amplifier.