A reservation random-access protocol for voice/data integrated spread-spectrum multiple-access systems

Most code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems described in the literature provide only one single service (voice or data) and employ the strategy of "one-code-for-one-terminal" for code-assignment. This assignment, though simple, fails to efficiently exploit the limited code resource encountered in practical situations. We present a new protocol called reservation-code multiple-access (RCMA), which allows all terminals to share a group of spreading codes on a contention basis and facilitates introducing voice/data integrated services into spread-spectrum systems. The RCMA protocol can be applied to short-range radio networks, and microcell mobile communications, and can be easily extended to wide area networks if the code-reuse technique is employed. In RCMA, a voice terminal can reserve a spreading code to transmit a multipacket talkspurt while a data terminal has to contend for a code for each packet transmission. The voice terminal will drop a long delayed packet while the data terminal just keeps it in the buffer. Therefore, two performance measures used to assess the proposed protocol are the voice packet dropping probability and the data packet average delay. Theoretical performance is derived by means of equilibrium point analysis (EPA) and is examined by extensive computer simulation.