CRDA: A collision resolution and dynamic allocation MAC protocol to integrate data and voice in wireless networks

One key requirement for radio access in advanced, third generation (3G) mob ile communication systems is the ability to accommodate a variety of servic es via a flexible and efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol. The p aper presents and evaluates a new multiple access protocol termed CRDA (col lision resolution and dynamic allocation), which has the potential to meet the above requirement, CRDA is basically a slotted packet-reservation multi ple access technique with dedicated reservation slots, which allows the mai n shortcoming of previous PRMA schemes, i.e., contention, to be overcome th rough the integration in the MAC protocol of a code-division multiple-acces s (CDMA) transmission mode used to access the reservation slots. This preve nts collisions during the reservation phase and enhances channel throughput , notably in the case of mixed voice/data traffic, Our simulations of the C RDA MAC integrate voice channels with data sources, generating what we call advanced data traffic, which has a very similar shape to the actual traffi c generated by World Wide Web (WWW) applications. The standard assumption o f Poissonian data traffic will also be considered. Our conclusion is that t he CRDA MAC protocol satisfactorily accommodates both types of traffic.