A Contention/Reservation Access Protocol for Speech and Data Integration in TDMA-Based Advanced Mobile Systems

The performance of third generation mobile systems is greatly influenced by the multiple access protocols used in the radio access system. The paper introduces a multiple access protocol, SIR (Service Integration for Radio Access), which has the potential for accommodating the requirements of speech and bursty data traffic in an efficient way. SIR is evolved from an access protocol (PRMA++) studied within the framework of the TDMA-based version of the European evolving standard for third generation mobile systems. In particular, SIR uses the same frame structure and in-band signalling but introduces a contention-free handling of data bandwidth requests while meeting speech service requirements via basic PRMA++ mechanisms.