A simulation study of packet access protocols for microcellular systems

The paper presents a simulation study of reservation random access (RRA) protocols for microcellular systems. The considered protocols are based on collision resolution techniques. Previous analytical evaluations show that these techniques represent a suitable solution for handling mixed traffic, consisting of speech and data, because they allow one to decouple the speech access procedure from the data access one. In the previous analytical works, a single cell scenario has been considered, assuming a radio channel with capture and errors. We present a simulation study that validates the analytical model, and extends the study to cellular scenarios. Different reuse factors are considered. The simulation includes the reservation traffic that affects the performance noticeably. The study presented is restricted to speech users only. The results of the simulation study about in-slot, decoupling RRA protocols in a cellular system with Rayleigh fading and shadowing are included.