Comparison of two dynamic channel assignment schemes under packet data traffic

Packet-based dynamic channel assignment (DCA) could be an attractive candidate to provide high-speed data services in future wireless communications. Most of the previous DCA studies focused on voice applications, however the traffic characteristics of data and voice are very different. This paper investigates and compares the effect of channel setup delay on the performance of two distributed measurement-based DCA schemes, namely best available (BA) and first available (FA), under packet data traffic. It is found that though BA gives a better signal quality (thus bit error rate) than FA in the idealized situation (i.e., zero setup delay), it is more sensitive to setup delay and performance target, and it underperforms FA when the setup delay is high or the performance target is strict.