Chapter 12

Multiple Access

12.1 Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
 Figure 12.1 Data link layer divided into two functionality-oriented sublayers

12.2
 Figure 12.2 Taxonomy of multiple-access protocols discussed in this chapter

12.3
 12-1 RANDOM ACCESS

In random access or contention methods, no station is

superior to another station and none is assigned the
control over another. No station permits, or does not
permit, another station to send. At each instance, a
station that has data to send uses a procedure defined
by the protocol to make a decision on whether or not to
send.
Topics discussed in this section:
ALOHA
Carrier Sense Multiple Access
Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection
Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance
12.4
 ALOHA
• ALOHA was developed at the University of
Hawaii in early 1970.
• It was designed for wireless LAN, but it can be
used on any shared medium.
• When a station(device) sends data, another
station may attempt to do so at the same time,
collisions may occur, and data may get
destroyed.

• Types
• Pure ALOHA
• Slotted ALOHA

12.5
 Pure ALOHA

• Four stations compete for the shared medium.

• Collisions between frame happen even if one bit of the frames coexist in the

channel at the same time.

12.6
 Pure ALOHA

• The pure ALOHA protocol relies on acknowledgments from

the receiver.
• If the acknowledgment does not arrive after a time-out period,
the station assumes that the frame (or the acknowledgment)
has been destroyed and resends the frame.
• If all these stations try to resend their frames after the time-out,
the frames will collide again.
Solution:
•Each station waits a random amount of time (backoff time: TB) before
resending its frame.
•After a maximum number of retransmission attempts Kmax, a station must
give up and try later.

•Time-out time = 2 × round trip time

12.7
 Pure ALOHA

12.8
 Vulnerable time in Pure ALOHA

• The length of time in which there is a possibility of collision.

Tfr refers to the transmission time

Vulnerable time = 2 × Tfr

12.9
Slotted ALOHA

• In pure ALOHA a station may send soon after another station has
started or just before another station has finished resulting in a
collision.
• Slotted ALOHA was invented to improve the efficiency of pure
ALOHA.
• Time divide into slots of Tfr seconds and stations forced send only
at the beginning of the time slot.
Slotted ALOHA

• If a station misses a slot, it must wait until the next slot to

transmit.
• This ensures that another station which had transmitted in the
previous slot finishes transmission.
Vulnerable time for Slotted ALOHA

• Vulnerable time = Tfr

Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA)

• Tries to reduce the number of collisions by making stations

sense the medium before transmitting.
• CSMA can reduce the possibility of collision, but it cannot
eliminate it.
• The possibility of collision still exists because of
propagation delay as it takes time for the first bit of a frame
to reach every station and for every station to sense it.
• A station may sense the medium and find it idle, only
because the first bit sent by another station has not yet been
received.
Collision in CSMA

• At time t1, station B senses the medium and finds it idle, so it

sends a frame.
• At time t2 (t2 > t1), station C senses the medium and finds it idle
because, at this time, the first bits from station B have not
reached station C.
• Station C also sends a frame, both the frames collide.
 Vulnerable time in CSMA

• Station A sends a frame at time t1 which arrives at the

furthest station D after Tp, the propagation time

12.15
Actions to be taken when the channel is idle and when busy

Three persistence methods are defined

• 1-persistent method

• Non-persistent method

• p-persistent method

12.16
 1-persistent method
• A station continuously senses the medium.
• If found idle, it transmits immediately.
• Has higher chance of collision as two frames may find
the medium idle simultaneously and transmit
immediately.

12.17
 Non-persistent method

• If the line is idle, the sender sends immediately.

• If not, it waits a random amount of time and then senses the
line again.
• Reduces the chance of collision as it is unlikely that two or
more stations will wait the same amount of time and retry to
send simultaneously.
• Is less efficient because the medium remains idle when there
may be frames to send.

12.18
 p-persistent method

• Channel divided into time slots, each slot equal to or greater

than maximum propagation time.
• When a station finds a medium idle following steps followed: -
1. With probability p, the station sends its frame.
2. With probability q = 1 − p, the station waits for the beginning of
the next time slot and checks the line again.
a. If line is idle, it goes to step 1.
b. If line is busy, it backs off.

12.19
 Figure Flow diagram for three persistence methods

12.20
 CSMA/CD

• Carrier sense multiple access with collision detection

(CSMA/CD) augments CSMA to detect collisions.

• A station monitors the medium after it sends a frame to see if

the transmission was successful. If, a collision is detected, the
frame is sent again.

12.21
 Collision of the first bit in CSMA/CD

• At time t1, station A sends the bits of its frame.

• At time t2, station C has not yet sensed the first bit sent by A. It
starts sending the bits in its frame, which propagate both to the left
and to the right.
• Collision occurs sometime after time t2.

12.22
 Collision of the first bit in CSMA/CD

• Station C detects a collision at time t3 when it receives the first bit of

A’s frame. It immediately aborts transmission.
• Station A detects collision at time t4 when it receives the first bit of
C’s frame; it also immediately aborts transmission.

12.23
 Figure 12.13 Collision and abortion in CSMA/CD

12.24
 Figure 12.14 Flow diagram for the CSMA/CD

12.25
 Figure 12.16 Timing in CSMA/CA

12.26
 Note

In CSMA/CA, the IFS can also be used to

define the priority of a station or a
frame.

12.27
 Note

In CSMA/CA, if the station finds the

channel busy, it does not restart the
timer of the contention window;
it stops the timer and restarts it when
the channel becomes idle.

12.28
 Figure 12.17 Flow diagram for CSMA/CA

12.29
 12-2 CONTROLLED ACCESS

In controlled access, the stations consult one another

to find which station has the right to send. A station
cannot send unless it has been authorized by other
stations. We discuss three popular controlled-access
methods.

Topics discussed in this section:

Reservation
Polling
Token Passing

12.30
 Figure 12.18 Reservation access method

12.31
 Figure 12.19 Select and poll functions in polling access method

12.32
Figure 12.20 Logical ring and physical topology in token-passing access method

12.33
 12-3 CHANNELIZATION

Channelization is a multiple-access method in which

the available bandwidth of a link is shared in time,
frequency, or through code, between different stations.
In this section, we discuss three channelization
protocols.

Topics discussed in this section:

Frequency-Division Multiple Access (FDMA)
Time-Division Multiple Access (TDMA)
Code-Division Multiple Access (CDMA)

12.34
 Note

We see the application of all these

methods in Chapter 16 when
we discuss cellular phone systems.

12.35
 Figure 12.21 Frequency-division multiple access (FDMA)

12.36
 Note

In FDMA, the available bandwidth

of the common channel is divided into
bands that are separated by guard
bands.

12.37
 Figure 12.22 Time-division multiple access (TDMA)

12.38
 Note

In TDMA, the bandwidth is just one

channel that is timeshared between
different stations.

12.39
 Note

In CDMA, one channel carries all

transmissions simultaneously.

12.40
 Figure 12.23 Simple idea of communication with code

12.41
 Figure 12.24 Chip sequences

12.42
 Figure 12.25 Data representation in CDMA

12.43
 Figure 12.26 Sharing channel in CDMA

12.44
 Figure 12.27 Digital signal created by four stations in CDMA

12.45
 Figure 12.28 Decoding of the composite signal for one in CDMA

12.46
 Figure 12.29 General rule and examples of creating Walsh tables

12.47
 Note

The number of sequences in a Walsh

table needs to be N = 2m.

12.48
 Example 12.6

Find the chips for a network with

a. Two stations b. Four stations

Solution
We can use the rows of W2 and W4 in Figure 12.29:
a. For a two-station network, we have
[+1 +1] and [+1 −1].

b. For a four-station network we have

[+1 +1 +1 +1], [+1 −1 +1 −1],
[+1 +1 −1 −1], and [+1 −1 −1 +1].

12.49
 Example 12.7

What is the number of sequences if we have 90 stations in

our network?

Solution
The number of sequences needs to be 2m. We need to
choose m = 7 and N = 27 or 128. We can then use 90
of the sequences as the chips.

12.50
 Example 12.8

Prove that a receiving station can get the data sent by a

specific sender if it multiplies the entire data on the
channel by the sender’s chip code and then divides it by
the number of stations.

Solution
Let us prove this for the first station, using our previous
four-station example. We can say that the data on the
channel
D = (d1 ⋅ c1 + d2 ⋅ c2 + d3 ⋅ c3 + d4 ⋅ c4).
The receiver which wants to get the data sent by station 1
multiplies these data by c1.
12.51
 Example 12.8 (continued)

When we divide the result by N, we get d1 .

12.52