A queueing theoretic approach to the delay analysis for the FCFS 0.487 conflict resolution algorithm

The authors apply their queuing-theoretic delay analysis methodology to several variations of the FCFS 0.487 conflict resolution algorithm. In this approach, the main component of the packet delay is viewed as a queuing problem in which each window selected by the channel access algorithm is a customer requiring conflict resolution as its service. The authors´ methodology is extended to handle all the features of the full FCFS 0.487 algorithm, including variable-size windows, arrival-time addressing (and hence true FCFS scheduling), and biased interval splitting. Some of these extensions involve approximations, but they make it possible to obtain the Laplace transform and moments of the packet delay. The authors also present an exact analysis for the three-cell algorithm, which is the 0.487 algorithm with a few modifications to satisfy the separability condition that reduces its capacity to 0.48. Comparisons made with other analyses (which provide bounds on the mean delay) and with extensive simulations show that the present results for both the mean and the variance of the packet delay are extremely accurate