Evaluation of the Random Token Protocol for High-Speed and Radio Networks

In high-speed communication networks, the ratio between the end-to-end propagation delay to packet transmission time is large, causing increased scheduling overhead in demand assignment protocols and increased collision probabilities in random access schemes. These lead to rapid degradation of the channel utilization in both channel access control approaches. In this paper, we present a "random token" oriented protocol where channel access is scheduled by random, implicit token passing leading to lower channel access control penalty. By optimally balancing the collision and scheduling penalties, the protocol allows the network to reach better performance than that obtained from random access schemes in networks with and without collision detection, without imposing additional system operational assumptions. Specifically, the random token protocol does not require knowledge of the number of stations, their identities, or synchronization in periods of silence. Therefore, the protocol is also suitable for high-speed networks with frequent reconfiguration and for mobile radio networks.