Generalized coincident pulse technique and new addressing schemes for time-division multiplexing optical buses

Time-division multiplexing (TDM) optical buses have applications in computer networks, high-performance routers and switches, and interprocessor communication subsystems of parallel computers. Three waveguides are used to implement the previously proposed TDM optical bus. One waveguide is used for data transmission, and the other two waveguides are used for processor addressing. The coincident pulse technique is used to implement a unary addressing scheme. This architecture has two drawbacks: the bandwidth of address waveguides is wasted and the scalability of the bus is limited due to the unary addressing. In this paper, the coincident pulse technique is generalized in order to derive compact addressing schemes for TDM optical buses. Based on this new technique, optimal addressing schemes are presented. Several general methods for designing new addressing schemes are proposed to achieve various trade-offs. Compared with the previously proposed addressing scheme, the new schemes significantly improve the utilization of the bandwidth of optical waveguides and the scalability of a TDM optical bus. (C) 2001 Academic Press.