A Generalizable Service Architecture for Mobile Networks

In response to the increasing demands for mobile communications and differentiated network services, we present a novel and generalizable service architecture that supports multiple service classes in wireless networks with mobile hosts. This architecture, called Lottery-Based Multiple Access (LBMA), is based on the abstraction of a lottery, in which hosts hold lottery tickets that represent a chance to “win” access to the communication channel for a fixed period of time. Services are differentiated by “coloring” lottery tickets and prioritizing their values. In this paper, we introduce and briefly discuss three components of the LBMA architecture: the lottery scheduling algorithm, the multiple access protocol, and the resource provisioning model.