In this paper, a feasible optical code-division multiple-access (CDMA) technique is proposed for high-speed computer networks using prime codes and optical signal processing to guarantee real-time data communications. All-optical architectures for fastly tunable CDMA encoders and decoders are presented, which can be feasibly implemented in the optical domain by using electrooptic switches and optical delay lines. This can support an ultrahigh throughput and a very fast reconfiguration time. Furthermore, we present a self-synchronized sample technique to ensure the correct phase synchronization between optical clock stream and asynchronous electronic data at each electrooptic modulator of an optical CDMA transmitter.

Shortened prime codes (SPR-codes) are presented, which can maintain the fixed code weight for any arbitrary number of codewords while still preserve the same cross and auto-correlation constraints as original prime codes. The use of SPR-codes can reduce both cost and power loss of optical encoders/decoders. Tunable all-optical SPR-code encoders are also designed, which are based on rapidly tunable optical delay lines. It is shown that using this type of encoders not only can further reduce the coding power loss, but also can achieve a very cost-effective fashion.

Different signature codes in an optical code division multiple access (CDMA) network have been known to demonstrate different performances. The performance of different signature codes in an optical CDMA network was analyzed here in this paper by including the performance evaluation for the synchronization process which was not considered previously. Both auto- and cross-correlation properties of the signature codes were found to be important. In addition, the performance comparison of (n, w1, 1, 1), (n, w2, 2, 1) optical orthogonal codes (OOC's), and (n, w3, w3, 1) extended prime code demonstrated that an (n, w2, 2, 1) OOC could accommodate more users than the other two.