Microcellular packet TDMA with time-slot assignment and site diversity

This paper investigates the performance of microcellular packet TDMA networks with a framed ALOHA-reservation protocol. Time-slot assignment algorithms, site diversity, and cluster size have an impact on the performance which we measure in terms of the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) and packet dropping probability. Simulation-based network models have been developed for obtaining the performance statistics. The models include portable radio multiple access, portable´s mobility, and radio propagation. The best SIR time-slot assignment algorithm with cluster size 1 is found to provide good quality transmission in a microcellular environment where co-channel interference is the limiting impairment. The results also show that the use of site diversity can significantly improve the transmission quality with respect to systems without such diversity