IP QoS delivery in a broadband wireless local loop: MAC protocol definition and performance evaluation

The wireless approach to the last mile access (wireless local loop, known a s WLL) is becoming increasingly attractive to network operators and service providers since it offers a flexible and cost-effective solution to enable delivery of even broadband services to end customers. In this paper, a ful l-blown broadband WLL network is presented. The proposal is based on the OF DM-CDMA technique, to which an added dynamic reservation/request MAC protoc ol is proposed, fully exploiting the OFDM-CDMA platform. Central to our pro posal is the support of different QoS profiles, in the context of QoS aware networks. As a case study, the explicit presentation of the IETF integrate d services support over our WLL system is addressed. An extensive performan ce evaluation focused on the MAC layer is then reported. We prove that our scheme achieves high utilization efficiency, as well as a fair share of the available radio capacity, even in the presence of highly heterogeneous tra ffic mix. Delay performance is provided for both reference traffic models, as well as for measured TP and MPEG traffic traces offered to the system.