Access-control disciplines for multi-access communication channels: Reservation and TDMA schemes

Reservation and TDMA schemes are studied for governing the access-control discipline for a network of terminals communicating through a multi-access broadcast channel. A single repeater is employed to allow a fully connected network structure. A channel can be characterized as inducing a Iow propagation-delay value, as for terrestrial radio or fine networks, or as being associated with a higher propagation-delay value, as for a satellite communication channel. A synchronized (slotted) communication medium is considered. Messages are composed of a random number of packets, governed by an arbitrary message-length distribution. The process describing the number of reserved message arrivals within each time frame is assumed to be a sequence of i.i.d, random variables, governed by an arbitrary distribution. (A Poisson arrival stream thus becomes a special case.) The reservation access-control disciplines studied in this paper employ message-switching distributed-control procedures. The performance of each access-control scheme is evaluated according to its delay-throughput function. In particular, schemes are developed to adapt their structure, or protocol, dynamically to the underlying fluctuating network traffic-flow values. A fixed-reservation access-control (FRAC) discipline is studied, employing a fixed periodic pattern of reservation and service periods. The reservation periods are used for the transmission of reservation packets as well as for the integrated service of other groups of network stations. The latter stations can access the channel during these periods, using any proper access control procedure. As a special case, message-delay distributions and moments under a TDMA scheme are obtained. Using dynamic estimates of the underlying message traffic parameters, a dynamic fixed-reservation access-control (DFRAC) scheme is obtained. An analytical technique, which employs a Markov ratio limit theorem, is presented for the derivation of the delay-throughput performance curves of dynamic demand-assignment reservation schemes. To illustrate its application, asynchronous reservation demand-assignment (ARDA) schemes are developed to adapt automatically to the underlying network traffic characteristics. Such schemes establish reservation slots dynamically according to observed network service demands and queue sizes.