A combined reservation random access polling protocol for voice-data transmissions in a wireless packet network

A key goal for future personal communication systems is to integrate voice and data communications in the same wireless packet network. This paper dea ls with a time-division multiple-access (TDMA)-based wireless packet networ k which provides access to a base station (BS) over a common short-range ra dio uplink channel for many spatially dispersed voice and data user termina ls. Voice users obtain reservations for their talkspurts by means of a rand om access protocol. Speech activity detection is assumed for voice communic ations to temporarily allocate data transmissions slots unused by voice use rs during silence periods. A suitable polling protocol is assumed to allow data users to access the uplink channel. The network proposed demonstrates good performance both in terms of quality of voice communications which is independent of data transmissions and maximum data traffic load supported w ith bounded delay. A performance comparison with the packet-reservation mul tiple-access (PRMA) protocol and more resent alternatives have also been pe rformed to highlight the good behavior of the proposed protocol.