Packet level performance characteristics of a MAC protocol for wireless ATM LANs

This paper determines packet level performance measures of a MAC protocol for a wireless ATM local area network. A key characteristic of the MAC protocol is the identifier splitting algorithm with polling, a contention resolution scheme used to inform the base station about the bandwidth needs of a mobile station when no piggybacking can be used. We consider higher layer packets that are generated at the mobile station and investigate the influence of the traffic characteristics of the packet arrival process on the efficiency of the protocol and on the delay that packets experience to access the shared medium.