Random multiple access of broadcast channels with Pareto distributed packet interarrival times

We consider the random multiple access of a slotted broadcast communication channel. Packet arrivals for such channels are often modeled as Poisson processes because the latter have attractive theoretical properties and are well understood, even though a number of traffic studies have shown that packet interarrival times are not always exponentially distributed. For example, some studies argue convincingly that traffic from a variety of working packet networks (LANs, WANs, etc.) is much better modeled using statistically self-similar processes to characterize the packet interarrival times of the aggregate traffic, which have much different properties than Poisson processes. Because of the great influence multiple access algorithms (used in the channel access subsystem) will have on the performance of third-generation digital wireless mobile communication systems, we study the problem of random multiple access under packet traffic generated by interactive data applications (e.g., reading/composing short e-mail messages, responding to paging type messages, transferring files between the mobile and a fixed computer, and querying of a database). We examine and demonstrate the performance robustness of the random access algorithms (RAAs) when they are driven by a strongly bursty packet arrival process, commonly found in interactive data applications.