ON THE VOICE-DATA INTEGRATION IN 3RD-GENERATION WIRELESS ACCESS COMMUNICATION-NETWORKS

Mobile wireless communications, which includes cellular telephones, la nd mobile radio, and personal communication systems, have experienced enormous growth over the last decade. Data services represent a critic al component of future wireless communications, but have received litt le attention. While some attention has been given to specialized mobil e data networks, less has been directed at the ongoing design of data services in evolving digital cellular networks. In this paper we repor t on the results of a simulation study which explores voice-data integ ration performance in third generation wireless communication networks . These networks are designed to provide access to broadband ISDN netw orks for large numbers of mobile voice and data users. The primary goa l of the paper is the development of multiple access transmission prot ocols that will enable the voice and data terminals to efficiently sha re the terminal to base station wireless channel. Reservation Random A ccess (RRA) protocols are used for voice traffic, and multiple random access contention protocols are used for data traffic. The RRA protoco ls used enable the data terminals to precisely determine the end of vo ice packet contention periods, therefore providing a natural separatio n between voice and data contention. Such voice data integration mecha nisms allow the voice contending terminals to resolve their contention without any interference from the data terminals. Data contention res olution does not degrade the voice performance. since it follows the v oice contention resolution. The above approach is a promising alternat ive to other existing proposals due to its superior data packet throug hput-delay performance under steady state, and voice performance under transient conditions. Our results show that dispersed voice and data terminals can efficiently share a wireless channel.