Disaster scenarios for hybrid TDMA wireless MAC protocols with contention based signaling

The multi-slot stack random access algorithm (msSTART) is proposed for use in IEEE 802.14 hybrid fiber/coaxial network and will be highly relevant for the S-MAC development of evolving WATM hybrid TDMA MAC specifications. This paper studies the performance of msSTART as an example of a Q-ary tree contention resolution algorithm (CRA) in the wireless environment using the novel basic deadlock model. We contrast approximate results for msSTART performance obtained by simulation under extreme inter-station correlation with analytical results for the more popular p-persistence CRA used in several testbed WATM implementations. Using a simple three state model to capture the effect of piggybacking of data packets, we provide comparative results for evaluation of msSTART and p-persistence Aloha under what the IEEE 802.14 Working Group has termed the 'disaster scenario'.