A variable priorities MAC protocol for Broadband Wireless Access with improved channel utilization among stations

Abstract

The Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) technology has been proposed to support different traffic classes with distinct quality of service (QoS) requirements in broadband metropolitan area networks. Therefore, as part of its specifications, such a system must properly address the combined requirements of wireless communications and multimedia applications. We propose in this paper an extension to the MAC protocol presented in [1, 2], by assigning variable priorities to the network stations sharing access to the communication channel. An analytical model to evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol is also developed and results obtained for the messages waiting times at different stations are presented. In addition, simulation data are used to compare the results obtained from the analytical model presented previously. It is concluded that the proposed variable priority MAC protocol is able to improve channel utilization and provide throughput and queueing delay fairness among the stations in the network.