A fair protocol for fast resource assignment in wireless PCS networks

Efficient sharing of communication resources is essential to PCS networks s ince the wireless bandwidth is limited. The Resource Auction Multiple Acces s (RAMA) protocol was recently proposed for fast resource assignment and ha ndover in wireless PCS networks. The RAMA protocol assigns available commun ication resources (e.g., TDMA time slots or frequency channels) to subscrib ers one at a time using a collision resolution protocol based on subscriber ID's. However, the RAMA protocol encounters an unfairness problem; further more, performance results also indicate that it is inefficient at transmitt ing fixed-length subscriber ID's. Moreover, the emerging services such as t eleconferencing have been presenting new challenges to dynamic-priority res ource assignment. Tn this paper, we propose a modification to the RAMA prot ocol to improve its performance and resolve the unfairness problem. The pro posed protocol also adopts dynamic priority assignment to improve the QOS f or subscribers in overload environments.