Performance evaluation of immediate slot deallocation in IPRMA for voice-data integration

Packet reservation multiple access (PRMA), is a channel access protocol which can be used for the short range radio transmission of voice and data packets in wireless LANs. To improve the utilisation of slots without causing degradation to the transmission of speech packets, Wong and Goodman (see IEE Proceedings-I, vo1.139, no.6, p.607-612, 1992), proposed a modification of the original PRMA protocol and called it integrated packet reservation multiple access (IPRMA). In IPRMA, both speech and data packets use a reservation mechanism for transmission. As in PRMA, before reservation can be made, the stations have to contend for channel access. Using simulation, Wong and Goodman, obtained results which showed that IPRMA gave significant improvements in the amount of traffic supported and also extended the stable operating range of the integrated system. In this article, immediate slot deallocation IPRMA is compared with IPRMA. The performance measures investigated include voice/data network throughput, number of collisions, number of consecutive packets dropped, link utilisation, and speech and data packet delays. As not all the results in this investigation were reported by Wong and Goodman their model was simulated in addition to the immediate slot deallocation IPRMA model to obtain results for comparison