A PACKET RESERVATION MULTIPLE ACCESS PROTOCOL FOR INTEGRATED SPEECH AND DATA-TRANSMISSION

The authors propose an 'integrated packet reservation multiple access' (IPRMA) protocol for transmitting both speech and data information. While speech users are allowed to contend for reservation slots on a frame-by-frame basis, data users may reserve multiple slots across a frame to increase throughput. The protocol includes a priority mechanism which ensures that speech users have greater access to idle slots since speech packets have a more demanding delay constraint. The proposed scheme is shown to provide equitable access to channel resources for both types of users yielding improvements in overall system performance while significantly increasing data throughput compared to a system without data packet reservation.