Performance analysis of the P2MP metropolitan area broadband wireless access network

The performance of point-to-multipoint (P2MP) metropolitan area broadband wireless access network architecture is examined in this paper. Such a network contains subscriber terminals located hundred to thousands of meters away from a hub. We begin first by proposing and constructing a compound stochastic process system model for a reservation-based medium access control protocol. We then present a performance analysis of the subscriber system based on three performance metrics: transmission collision probability, system throughput and traffic delay. Our analysis shows that transmission collision probability increases as the propagation delay from a subscriber to its hub increases this is the unfairness of reservation-based MAC protocol in P2MP fixed wireless access networks. It also shows that subscriber system throughput decreases as the propagation delay from subscriber to wireless hub increases. This paper gives a mathematical solution to this unfairness problem. Finally we recommend that by assigning different maximum window sizes to different subscribers, it is possible to reduce the unfairness.