Performance evaluation of medium access control methods in light trail networks

We evaluate performance of two medium access control methods with token passing, LT-FA MAC and ART MAC, in light trail networks. LT-FA MAC aims at coping with bursty packet arrivals while ART MAC aims at decreasing transmission delay. Simulation evaluation is performed in terms of the number of the maximum transmission nodes accommodated on a light trail and the maximum communication distance under the constraints that the bandwidth utilization rate of 90% and the average transmission delay of 100 ms must be achieved. Simulation results show that ART MAC permits about 500–1500km longer communication distance than LT-FA MAC with the same number of transmission nodes on a light trail and ART MAC accommodates about 15–25 more nodes than LT-FA MAC with the same communication distance.