Efficient protocols for multimedia streams on WDMA networks

This paper introduces a new approach to integrate different types of medium access (MAC) protocols into a single wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) network system so as to efficiently accommodate various types of multimedia traffic streams with different characteristics and quality of service (QoS) demands. The proposed WDM network, which is termed multimedia wavelength multiple access (M-WDMA), considered three types of multimedia traffic streams: A constant-bit-rate (CBR) traffic and two classes of variable-bit-rate (VBR) traffic. Accordingly, three tunable transmitters and one fixed home channel receiver for data transmission are used. The transmitters transmit the three types of multimedia traffic streams in a pipeline fashion so as to overcome the tuning time overhead. We further incorporate a dynamic bandwidth allocation scheme that dynamically adjusts the portions of bandwidth occupied by the three types of traffic streams according to their QoS demands. The performance of M-WDMA is evaluated through a simple analytical model and extensive simulations. It is shown that M-WDMA can satisfy the QoS requirements of various mixes of multimedia traffic streams even under very stringent requirements.