A novel multiple access scheme over multi-packet reception channels for wireless multimedia networks

Recent advances in signal processing techniques have enabled wireless networks to have multi-packet reception (MPR) capability at the physical layer, where it is possible to receive more than one packets when concurrent transmissions occur. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-reservation multiple access (MRMA) scheme for future wireless multimedia networks based on such an MPR channel model. MRMA can fully exploit the channel's MPR capacity while fulfilling the quality of service requirements of different multimedia traffic. Similar to many existing reservation protocols, MRMA guarantees (i) bounded access delay for real-time traffic by dropping packets not transmitted within the required delay bound, and (ii) satisfaction of the required packet loss ratio when applied in conjunction with a connection admission control method to limit the number of admitted traffic streams. MRMA further incorporates a priority control mechanism to differentiate guaranteed and best-effort services for real-time voice/video and connectionless data, respectively. Analytical and simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of MRMA in service differentiation and increasing the number of admitted traffic streams.