Delay performance analysis of voice traffic in a cellular wireless ATM network

Wireless ATM networks are attractive because they can provide quality of service (QoS) for voice, video, data and multimedia traffic all in a single network. Many medium access control (MAC) protocols for wireless ATM have been proposed and studied in the literature. Due to the complexity of these MAC protocols for wireless ATM and the traffic models, only simulation results are presented for voice and/or data traffic for these MAC protocols. We derive approximate mathematical analysis for the mean delay and the delay distribution of real-time voice traffic under light load (less than 60% of the capacity). The MAC protocol used is an enhanced time division multiple access with dynamic reservation (TDMA/DR). The accuracy of the analytical results is verified by simulation, which does not make use of any assumptions made in the analyses. In our computer simulation, we consider three service classes represented by voice, real-time variable bit rate (VBR) Markov modulated Poisson process (MMPP) video and non-time-critical data traffic. From numerical results, the delay performance for voice traffic is well within its maximum delay limit to support real-time service.