A contention-based reservation protocol using a TDD channel for wireless local area networks: A performance analysis

A typical configuration of a LAN having wireless terminals is a network of microcells. The authors report on a microcell which consists of a single base station and wireless terminals. A channel allocation scheme between uplink (terminal-to-base) and downlink (base-to-terminal) communications and a media access control (MAC) protocol used for the uplink communication are considered. In particular, a reservation protocol with a slotted ALOHA reservation channel utilizing the TDD (time division duplex) technique is studied. The performance of the protocol is analyzed in terms of throughput and average message delay by the equilibrium point analysis (EPA) method. The authors examine how the ratio of the uplink channel capacity to the downlink channel capacity affects the performance under various traffic conditions