SPREAD SPECTRUM FIBER OPTIC LOCAL AREA NETWORK USING OPTICAL PROCESSING.

Spread spectrum code division multiple access (CDMA) can potentially allow asynchronous multiple access to a local area network (LAN) with no waiting. The additional bandwidth required by spread spectrum can be accommodated using a fiber optic channel and incoherent optical signal processing. New CDMA sequences are designed specifically for optical processing, and it is shown that the number of users can be substantially increased over conventional CDMA systems. The signal to noise ratio for optical CDMA increases over conventional CDMA as the square root of the increase in number of optical chips over conventional chips. An experiment is performed demonstrating the performance of an optical CDMA LAN, operating at 100 Mbauds, with three users.