Group randomly addressed polling for multicell wireless data networks

An effective multiple access protocol for wireless (mobile) networks such as wireless LANs is under active investigation. Randomly addressed polling (RAP) designed to operate in multicell wireless (data) networks was proposed to satisfy channel utilization, no handoff roaming, transparency to different physical layer transmissions, and other desirable features. Taking system stability and system capacity into consideration, the authors further modify RAP to GRAP (group randomly addressed polling) for wireless LANs and possible other personal/mobile communication networks with multicell coverage. The performance of GRAP has been theoretically analyzed and the numerical results are also presented. GRAP with better performance and stability than RAP while keeping all the desirable features of RAP is clearly one of the best candidates for multicell wireless networks