Random-access control mechanisms using adaptive traffic load in ALOHA and CSMA strategies for EDGE

In this paper, three random access control mechanisms based on the well-known Slotted ALOHA, NP-CSMA, and 1P-CSMA protocols are presented. The basic idea is to limit the number of transmissions and retransmissions at high traffic loads in order to minimize collisions while keeping system stability. A new medium-access control protocol called Adaptive Traffic Load (ATL) is proposed. With ATL, all users are assigned authorization of transmission probabilities that vary according to the prevailing average traffic conditions in the system. ATL ensures that the system throughput is kept constant at its maximum value regardless of the traffic load. A mathematical analysis to calculate the probability density function of the access delay in the ATL protocol under the assumption of infinite user population is also presented. Mean access delay follows increases exponentially with respect to the traffic load when conventional random access protocols are used. However, it follows a linear function with respect to the traffic load when ATL is used. The average traffic load of the system is an input of the ATL protocol in order to assign access authorization probabilities to all users attempting to access the network. A simple algorithm for traffic load estimation based on the probability of finding empty slots in the system within an estimation period is proposed in this paper to asses the average traffic load. In the numerical evaluations of ATL, the Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution (EDGE) system is considered as a case study. For high arrival rates, channel utilization can be low in EDGE even if the system has sufficient capacity to serve incoming data users. A mathematical analysis of ATL-Slotted ALOHA as well as ATL-CSMA is presented. In the case of ATL-CSMA, system throughput varies according to the cell size. Hence, the ATL protocol is evaluated in picocell, microcell and macrocell environments as recommended by ITU-R. Also, the performance of EDGE is evaluated in terms of average data rate and packet delay for both S-ALOHA and ATL S-ALOHA considering long range dependent traffic type.