Cross-layer performance of a distributed real-time MAC protocol supporting variable bit rate multiclass services in WPANs

Abstract

A cross-layer optimization problem to maximize utilization for a distributed real-time medium access control (MAC) protocol supporting variable bit rate (VBR) multiclass services is formulated. A complete sharing (CS) scheme is used as the admission control policy at the connection level to relate the maximum number of devices that can be admitted in the wireless personal area network (WPAN) to the grade of service (GoS) of blocking probability at the connection level, the quality of service (QoS) of packet loss probability at the packet level and the effective data transmission slots efficiency at the MAC layer. With this cross-layer analytical framework, the maximum number of devices that can be admitted into the system to achieve maximum utilization while maintaining prescribed GoS/QoS requirements under different total device mean connection arrival rate can be determined. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed cross-layer coupling strategy. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2006.