Packet Radio Monitoring Via Repeater-On-Packets

The packet radio network (PRNET) is a store-and-forward packet switching system consisting of switching nodes which share a single radio communication channel. Recent studies have shown that PRNETs can easily be saturated and become unstable unless efficient routing and flow control algorithms are used. To enable point-to-point packet transportation, network stations assign a code (label) to each repeater; the process of assigning such labels is referred to as "network initialization." The initialization procedure assumes that the network topology is now known a priori and is changing with time. Thus the initialization procedure involves mapping of network topology, determining network structure (labels for repeaters), and transmitting labels to the repeaters. Although many authors have developed analytical models to study channel access schemes, no one has yet addressed the initialization issue. We present a Markov chain model which enables one to obtain in close form the optimal rates at which repeaters and station must transmit repeater-on-packets (ROPs) and label packets (LLPs) to minimize the network initialization time in a one-hop network, finite buffer station. Our most important result is that the network initialization time is relatively insensitive to the station transmission rate, but the repeater transmission rate must be carefully chosen to achieve rapid initialization.