Opportunistic performance enhancement of reservation multiple access protocols of wireless broadband networks

Most of today´s broadband networks, including the recently ratified IEEE 802.16 standard, employ reservation based multiple media access control. A problem pertinent to reservation MAC protocols is the division of frame slots between the contention and data transmission processes. In most of the reservation MAC protocols no specific ratio is standardized, leaving proprietary solutions address the local network environment. As both processes are equally important for maintaining efficient delay and throughput performance, a solution must consider the timely varying traffic load. For example, heterogeneity and cooperation of networks promote access technologies that can sustain waves of increasing traffic load. In this paper, we start by instituting a framework for efficient allocation of frame resources to the contention and data transmission processes in light of the delay and throughout performance. We then propose a dynamic resource allocation controller based on a Markovian optimization model, where the optimization parameters are tuned according to specific preferential criteria of service providers. Our model achieves opportunistic performance improvements, on a per frame basis, over the best-case static allocation. Through simulation, we study the merits of our proposed optimized controller with respect to the framework. We show by illustrative examples and numerical results that the controller successfully fulfills the framework objectives.