Fiber-Optic Bus-Oriented Single-Hop Interconnections among Multi-Transceiver Stations

This paper explores the merits of the single-path selective-broadcast interconnection (SBI) implemented in fiber-optic technology. This is a static, passive, fiber-optic interconnection among a set of stations, each equipped with multiple, say c, transmitters and receivers. It employs c2 buses, each interconnecting a subset of the stations, and provides a single optical path between any two stations. Thus, it succeeds in decoupling transmission rate from aggregate network through-put. It also offers substantial advantages in power budget and the maximum number of stations that can be connected without repeaters or amplifiers. When compared with c buses, each interconnecting all stations, this SBI is also attractive in terms of the required passive fiber-optic compnents such as fiber segments and star couplers. For a fixed power budget, the capacity of this SBI is optimal among bus-oriented single-hop interconnections for both a uniform traffic pattern and worst-case unknown skew. © 1991 IEEE