The Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol and the underlying traffic scheduling schemes
defined in the Wireless ATM Network Demonstrator (WAND) system being developed within project Magic WAND are presented. Magic WAND is investigating wireless ATM technology for customer premises networks in the framework of the Advanced Communications Technologies and Services (ACTS) programme, funded by the European Union. The MAC protocol, known as MASCARA, is a hub-based, adaptive TDMA scheme, which combines reservation- and contention-based access methods to provide multiple access efficiency and quality of service guarantees to wireless ATM terminal connections sharing a common radio channel. The traffic scheduling policies are delay oriented to meet the requirements of the various traffic classes defined by the ATM architecture. Simulation results are presented to assess the performance of the proposed protocols.
