Performance of a multiple access protocol for an ATM based pico-cellular radio LAN

In recent years considerable interest has been shown in the development of packet-based in-building radio LANs. Most of these networks use more than one frequency together with slot reservation strategies to handle mobile traffic in a radio environment. This paper proposes an architecture and a related media access protocol, using a single frequency, to support ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) traffic in multihop wireless LANs. Fixed size packets (known as ATM cells) are used to permit statistical muitiplexing, which enables the support of multimedia traffic in radio LANs. CSMA/AED (carrier sense multiple access with acknowledgement error detection) is the protocol proposed and analysed for ATM services. In conjunction with carrier sensing, the protocol uses a per cell basis acknowledgement packet to reduce the ATM cell loss rate by indirectly detecting errors, caused either by collision or by reception of a faulty cell at the receiver. The results presented in this paper are obtained from a simulation model, developed to investigate the protocol performance at the media access layer and its effects on overall network performance