Performance analysis of a wireless multiple access protocol for a mobile microcellular communication network

This paper studies the multiple access technique adopted in the MINECOM network, a versatile mobile microcellular communications network specifically designed for underground mining. The MINECOM network is designed to provide reliable communications for multiple channels of two-way voice, monitoring data, control signals, and eventually compressed digital video. The MINECOM multiple access protocol is a variant of a reservation MAC protocol with a slotted ALOHA packet reservation channel utilizing the TDD technique, or a so called TDD R-ALOHA. The performance of the MINECOM protocol is analyzed in terms of throughput and average message delay by the EPA (equilibrium point analysis) method.