Enhancements for integrated wireless personal communications over metropolitan area networks

The IEEE 802.6 metropolitan area network (MAN) has been proposed previously to provide for the distributed control of networks providing personal communications services (PCS). This paper continues investigations into voice transport on the MAN using pre-arbitrated (PA) bandwidth, and for signaling and data transport using queue arbitrated (QA) bandwidth. A new scheme for the transport of PCS voice is proposed. Capacity gains are realized with PA access by locating a gateway to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) at the head of bus (HOB) in a closed-bus MAN. Reductions in PCS signaling delays on the MAN are realized by applying the preemptive priority mechanism (PPM). In summary, improvements to the PA and QA transport mechanisms, as applied to personal communications networks (PCNs), are developed and assessed. Additionally, an architecture for a MAN-based PCN is presented in the context of the intelligent network (IN) and future migration towards ATM/B-ISDN