The Broadcast Channel Allocation Problem

Network links can be divided into two categories: those using point-to-point  connections and those using broadcast channels.  In any broadcast network, the key issue is how to determine who gets to use  the channel when there is competition for it.

      The protocols used to determine who goes next on a multiaccess channel belong to a sublayer of the data link layer called the MAC (Medium Access Control) sublayer. The MAC sublayer is especially important in LANs, particularly wireless ones because wireless is naturally a broadcast channel. WANs, in contrast, use point-to-point links, except for satellite networks. Technically, the MAC sublayer is the bottom part of the data link layer.

Static Channel Allocation

      The traditional way of allocating a single channel, such as a telephone trunk, among multiple competing users is to chop up its capacity by using Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM) or Time Division Multiplexing (TDM). Even assuming that the number of users could somehow be held constant at N, dividing the single available channel into some number of static subchannels is inherently inefficient. The basic problem is that when some users are quiescent, their bandwidth is simply lost.

      The poor performance of static FDM can easily be seen with a simple queuing theory calculation. Let us start by finding the mean time delay, T, to send a frame onto a channel of capacity C bps. We assume that the frames arrive randomly with an average arrival rate of λ frames/sec, and that the frames vary in length with an average length of 1/μ bits. With these parameters, the service rate of the channel is μC frames/sec. A standard queuing theory result is
                                        T = 1 / (μC − λ)
(For the curious, this result is for an ‘‘M/M/1’’ queue. It requires that the randomness of the times between frame arrivals and the frame lengths follow an exponential distribution, or equivalently be the result of a Poisson process.) Now let us divide the single channel into N independent subchannels, each with capacity C/N bps. The mean input rate on each of the subchannels will now be λ/N. Recomputing T, we get
                                 Tn = 1 / [μ(C /N) − (λ/N)] = N / (μC − λ) = NT

The mean delay for the divided channel is N times worse than if all the frames were somehow magically arranged orderly in a big central queue.

      Precisely the same arguments that apply to FDM also apply to other ways of statically dividing the channel. If we were to use TDM and allocate each user every Nth time slot, if a user does not use the allocated slot, it would just lie fallow. The same would hold if we split up the networks physically.

      Since none of the traditional static channel allocation methods work well at all with bursty traffic, we will explore dynamic methods.

Dynamic Channel Allocation

      We only present the following five key assumptions here and describe dynamic methods in the later essays.

      1. Independent Traffic.

     2. Single Channel.

     3. Observable Collisions.

     4. Continuous or Slotted Time.

     5. Carrier Sense or No Carrier Sense.