Delay upper bounds for a finite user random-access system with bursty arrivals

The authors study the effect of burstiness of packet arrivals on the performance of a buffered finite-user random-access system. Primarily, they formulate and analyze a protocol that exploits the burstiness of arrivals and the presence of buffers. In addition, it is shown that the boundary of the region in which infinite user models best approximate a finite-user system is dependent on the burstiness of the arrival process. They also show that an accurate comparison between time-division multiaccess (TDMA) and random-access schemes depends crucially on the number of users in the system