A probing process for dynamic resource allocation in fixed broadband wireless access networks

The paper deals with the support of both real-time and non-real-time communication services in a broadband fixed wireless access network. It investigates the feasibility of dynamically allocating the bandwidth not utilized by other sectors in the staggered resource allocation method. A new medium-access control (MAC) protocol based on the proposed probing process that does not need information exchange and coordination among base stations is presented to improve data packet transmission. The probing process detects available slots unused by other sectors to provide a higher capacity in sectorized cells. A simplified C-PRMA, referred to as prioritized access with centralized polling command, is adopted to implement the probing process effectively. Simulation results show that the proposed MAC protocol with probing process provides an improvement over C-PRMA. In terms of data traffic, the proposed protocol increases the link capacity to near 100% as opposed to 78% for C-PRMA when the workload of other sectors is 69% of the link capacity. In terms of voice traffic, the probing process provides 23% more user capacity than C-PRMA when there are 20 voice users in other sectors.