Performance evaluation of a MAC protocol for wireless ATM networks supporting the ATM service categories

This paper presents a Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for broadband wireless LANs based on the ATM transfer mode, together with the evaluation of its performance in terms of throughput and access delay. Important characteristics of the MAC protocol are the way information between the Mobile Stations (MS) and Base Station (BS) is exchanged and the algorithm used to allocate the bandwidth in order to support the service categories. The performance is heavily influenced by the way the BS is informed about the bandwidth needs of the MSs. In order to obtain an efficient system, a contention resolution scheme based on an Identifier Splitting Algorithm combined with polling is proposed for that purpose, in case no piggybacking can be used. A detailed analytical evaluation, both on cell level and higher layer packet level, is performed, leading to an assessment of the efficiency and the access delay of the system.