A Flow-aware MAC Protocol for a Passive Optical Metropolitan Area   Network
  The paper introduces an original MAC protocol for a passive optical metropolitan area network using time-domain wavelength interleaved networking (TWIN)% as proposed recently by Bell Labs . Optical channels are shared under the distributed control of destinations using a packet-based polling algorithm. This MAC is inspired more by EPON dynamic bandwidth allocation than the slotted, GPON-like access control generally envisaged for TWIN. Management of source-destination traffic streams is flow-aware with the size of allocated time slices being proportional to the number of active flows. This emulates a network-wide, distributed fair queuing scheduler, bringing the well-known implicit service differentiation and robustness advantages of this mechanism to the metro area network. The paper presents a comprehensive performance evaluation based on analytical modelling supported by simulations. The proposed MAC is shown to have excellent performance in terms of both traffic capacity and packet latency. 
Philippe Robert and James Roberts
cs.NI