VII

King Saudi University

College of Computer and Information Sciences
Computer Engineering Department

DPAP : A Dynamic Polling Based Access Protocol for Wireless

Networks

Mohammad M. Al-Fawaz
Supervised by
Dr. Sami S. Al-Wakeel

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Masters degree

in Computer Engineering at the College of Computer and Information Sciences
King Saud University

Riyadh
1418 H/1998 G

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Abstract:
Wireless communication has become an important field of
activity in telecommunication. The demand for personal services
increases dramatically and the required service is no longer
restricted to the telephone call. Thus, the emerging wireless data
communication services, such as portable computing, paging,
personal mail, etc., play an increasingly important role in current
wireless systems. It is recognized that these systems will be
required to support a wider range of telecommunication
applications involving packet data, voice, image, and full motion
video. In that time, the user will be released from the bondage of
the telephone line and enjoy the freedom of telecommunications.
One problem associated with the wireless systems is that the
system bandwidth is limited. Only a finite number of channels are
available. To satisfy the huge service demand and fulfill the
multimedia requirement with limited bandwidth, an efficient
multiple access (MA) scheme is, therefore, required.
In this thesis, we have proposed and analyzed a modified
Polling-Based Multiple Access protocol for wireless local area
networks. We consider a radio channel as the link between the
user terminals and the network base station. The channel is shared
by a number of mobile terminals which are divided into
hierarchical groups with different identification numbers. The
channel time is divided into a sequence of fixed length frames,
which are subdivided into variable length registration cycle and
an information cycle. The information cycle time is divided into
fixed size slots used for information packet transmission. The
proposed protocol statistically multiplexes voice packets with
data packets over the shared terminal to base radio channel. For
active user identification in the registration cycle, an adaptive
polling scheme, requiring a small bandwidth and a little
centralized control from the base station is suggested. Packet
scheduling of active users in the information cycle is then
achieved through a modified conventional polling scheme.

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Performance of the protocol for integrated traffic was evaluated

using approximate analytic analysis and computer simulation.
The performance results show that a large number of active users
can be multiplexed on the wireless channel keeping in the voice
packet loss probability within acceptable limits. The thesis work
has demonstrated that the proposed protocol will provide a good
scheduling for packet transmission of integrated voice and data
services and has the advantages of the polling technique, with
reasonable short overhead time for active terminals poll.
Further more, the protocol allows data traffic to be transparent
to voice terminals by treating active voice users with preemptive
priority over data users. Comparing the proposed protocol to
similar protocols in the literatures, such as RAMA and PRMA,
the thesis has demonstrated that the proposed protocol is superior
in the sense that it does not introduce any significant fixed
reservation overhead. In addition, it is more suited to the dynamic
behavior of integrated traffic since there is no fixed boundary
required between voice and data information slots. Due to the
protocol high capacity feature and simplicity to implement, the
protocol is an excellent candidate for multi-access schemes in
wireless local area networks.