A multimedia adaptation protocol to enhance Hiperlan performance in picocellular architectures

Wireless LANs can potentially provide very high bandwidth picocellular coverage in a multi-layered third generation mobile system. Hiperlan (Type I), the new European radio LAN standard, provides an air rate of 23 Mbit/s on up to five frequencies. However, the Hiperlan protocol is very inefficient at transporting small packets (e.g. ATM cells) and offers only limited quality of service when overloaded. In this paper we propose a new protocol, the Hiperlan picocellular adaptation layer, to operate above Hiperlan and show, by means of detailed simulations, that this dramatically increases the throughput for small packets and allows almost any quality of service scheme to be implemented.