A combined reservation random access polling protocol for voice-data transmissions in a wireless packet network

A key goal for future personal communication systems is to integrate voice and data communications in the same wireless packet network. This paper deals with a time-division multiple-access (TDMA)-based wireless packet network which provides access to a base station (BS) over a common short-range radio uplink channel for many spatially dispersed voice and data user terminals. Voice users obtain reservations for their talkspurts by means of a random access protocol. Speech activity detection is assumed for voice communications to temporarily allocate data transmissions slots unused by voice users during silence periods. A suitable polling protocol is assumed to allow data users to access the uplink channel. The network proposed demonstrates good performance both in terms of quality of voice communications which is independent of data transmissions and maximum data traffic load supported with bounded delay. A performance comparison with the packet-reservation multiple-access (PRMA) protocol and other alternatives have also been performed to highlight the good behavior of the proposed protocol.