A multiple access protocol for integrated voice and high-speed data in wireless networks

An asynchronous multiple access protocol is presented for integrated voice/data communications in wireless networks, whereby the base station coordinates the uplink access of terminals within its cell with short controlling messages. Voice terminals are given access rights to the channel in a round-robin order, and transmit variable length packets to adapt to congestion. On the other hand, data terminals have to contend for air-time with minipackets, on invitation from the base station. Minipacket conflicts, whenever they occur, are expeditiously resolved with a binary splitting tree algorithm. The protocol is developed to allow downlink and uplink traffic to time-share a common radio channel. Voice and data access procedures are multiplexed by the base station with a (T/sub v/,T/sub d/)-scheme, whereby voice and data traffic are served alternately for a maximum of T/sub v/ and T/sub d/ seconds, respectively. The resulting multiple access protocol lends itself to flexible access procedures, while providing an efficient use of the available bandwidth. In addition, very low data packet delays can be achieved without deteriorating the performance of voice traffic.