Time-Division Multiplexing (TDM)

TDM is one of the implementation of #Multiplexing where each end station own a particular time slot for the network transmission. This means that each data stream has an assigned slot in a repeating sequence which is more efficient compare to assigning a physical connection to each of them. In the context of optical transmission, this means that several signals are travelling in a single wavelength but is divided into several channels using time slot.

However, this is not without any downside: since the end station own the time slot, other end station could not utilise it for their own advantages when the time slot is in idle which is wasted.

There are several technologies implement the multiplexing scheme or anything similar to this:

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  • Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)

    SONET is a #Physical Layer #optical technology that supports from 155 Mbps up to 10 Gbps high transmission rates for Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) using #Time-Division Multiplexing (TDM) multiplexing scheme. It provides means of transportation to Data Link Layer# protocols and of conversion using Fibre-Optic Transmission Systems (FOTS), which is a Modulator. It has extensive OAMP (operation, administrative, maintenance and provisioning) capabilities. This allows precise fault detection and a rapid (50 ms) failover (switching to a redundant or standby computer server, system, hardware component or network upon the failure or abnormal termination of the previously active application). Its speed is range from 51.84 Mbps (OC-1) to 9953.28 Mbps (OC-192).

  • Multiplexing
  • Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)

    ATM supports asynchronous transmission using an optimised version of Time-Division Multiplexing (TDM)#. Since in standard TDM, an end station could not use an idle time slot owned by another end station, this could result in some inefficiency. Instead of favouring static allocation, ATM improves it letting the end stations to choose their slot based on priority. The slot that has the highest priority is the primary time slot for that end station. If the slot is not being used by its primary owner, it can be assigned to other end station temporarily to transmit data over.

#networking