A unified approach to analyze multiple access protocols for buffered finite users

In this paper, a new approach is proposed to analyze the performance of buffered random multiple access protocols called tagged user analysis (TUA). In TUA, each user is modeled as an independent queueing system, which operates at its own equilibrium probability. As a result, the classical queueing theory can be employed to analyze the queueing behavior of each user. On the basis of the behavior of the tagged user, the performance of the whole system is analyzed. TUA is a unified method of analyzing most of random access methods including the heterogeneous random multiple access techniques that are difficult to analyze otherwise. Furthermore, TUA can also handle those systems where user terminals may have arbitrary packet size (in slots) distribution, arbitrary arrival processes such as batch packet arrivals in Bernoulli, arbitrary service principle such as priority queueing, last came first served, and random service. In this paper, in addition to analyzing for the distributions of several performance indices, their mean values are obtained.