Free access stack algorithms for microcellular radio systems

We evaluate the data traffic performance of a centralized packet access protocol for microcellular radio systems supporting both speech and data users. A time-slotted radio channel is assumed. Speech contention is decoupled from data contention to give speech priority over data. A free access stack algorithm is used for handling data contention. An out-slot access scheme is used in which the slots are divided into user-information transmission slots and contention slots for sending transmission requests. The contention slots are subdivided in minislots to improve the access capacity. The out-slot algorithm performances are compared with the performances of a previously proposed in-slot one in which all slots can be used for sending user information. A memoryless channel, with capture and errors, is considered. The effects of speech traffic on data performance are evaluated. Moreover, the paper presents a method for evaluating the packet error probability of a packet cellular system. This method is used for evaluating the proposed algorithm in a microcellular system. An access technique with coordinated operation among cochannel cells is studied. The effects of sectorization on data performances and protocol unfairness are investigated. Different frequency reuse factors are taken into consideration.