The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 03, 1990
Filed:
Mar. 29, 1989
Anthony Acampora, Freehold, NJ (US);
Michael G Hluchyj, Little Silver, NJ (US);
Mark J Karol, Fair Haven, NJ (US);
American Telephone and Telegraph Company, New York, NY (US);
AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ (US);
Abstract
The present invention relates to a multichannel multihop lightwave communication network which allows packet concurrency in the network while avoiding the need for agile optical devices. The network comprises a lightwave communication medium (10) for supporting a plurality of independent user nodes; and a plurality of N network interface units (NIUs) (11). Each NIU is connected to the lightwave medium and one or more separate user nodes and comprises a trnasmitter section (28-35) and a receiver section (20-27) which are each fixedly assigned to transmit and receive, respectively, over a single channel or a plurality of separate channels to or from other NIUs of the network. In a connectivity pattern for one embodiment of the network, the NIUs are divided into k groups of p.sup.k NIUs such that each NIU of a first group of p.sup.k NIUs is capable of transmitting over the fixedly assigned single channel, or any or all of the p separate channels, to a preferred one or all of the associated p separate NIUs of a second group, etc. based on a generalization of a perfect shuffle pattern. Such technique permits all NIUs of the network to communicate with all other NIUs either via a single hop or via multiple hops where NIUs in subsequent groups of p.sup.k NIUs act as intermediate retransmission units.